TOM FROUGE

Excecutive Director

In retrospect, Tom Frouge began his music career one Sunday night in 1964 in front of the television watching the Ed Sullivan show.  He began his music business career in 1988 as a disc jockey at free-form radio station WPKN-FM in Bridgeport, CT, where he also served as music director for eight years. During his tenure at the station, Tom began working at Green Linnet Records where he served as Director of National Promotion for five years. He also oversaw the label’s Red Bird imprint, which specialized in American Roots music, and was A&R and Project Manager for many of the label’s world music acts on the Xenophile imprint. In 1998 Frouge joined Putumayo World Music as Senior VP of Promotion/Artist Label Manager,  moving over to Triloka Records in 2000 as Senior Vice President and General Manager.

Tom has worked in most aspects of the music business (labels, management, promotion & marketing, publishing, record producing, presenting, songwriting). He is Executive Director, Avokado Artists, a 501(c)3, 360°arts organization dedicated to cross-cultural understanding through the arts and the cultivation, promotion, presentation and preservation of culturally significant artists and their work from around the globe.  The organization’s activities include artist management, presenting and consultation and is home to, among others, Iraqi-American oud virtuoso and composer Rahim AlHaj, who is a NEA 2015 National Heritage Fellowship Award recipient. In 2011 Avokado Artists launched an independent, in-house label (Avokado Artists Recordings), whose debut CD Aam Zameen by Kiran Ahluwalia was honored with a 2012 JUNO Award (Canadian “Grammy”).

Tom is also founder, curator and director of ¡Globalquerque! New Mexico’s Annual Celebration of World Music & Culture, a 2013 recipient of the Creative Bravos Award, entering its 18th year.  He is co-founder and curator of Festival Eclectica of Angel Fire entering its 3rd year and is booking consultant for the venerable Lotus World Music & Arts Festival in Bloomington, IN now in its 29th year.  He has been a consultant for a number of music labels and organizations and served for 5 years as Music Liaison for Economic Development, City of Albuquerque.  Tom has served on and moderated numerous panels on Radio, Promotion, Marketing, Presenting, Festivals, Economics of Art, Labels and A & R at conferences around the world including WOMEX, APAP and SxSW, and has written articles for various publications including Billboard.com and Gavin. In his spare time he programs three internet radio streams for Slacker.com and hosts a weekly local radio program, The Strange Land, on KUPR-FM in Placitas, NM.  A long time political and environmental activist, Tom holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts.  Tom is the proud father of and to Talis Chase Frouge, currently a senior at Maryland Institute College of Art (and designer of new Avokado Artists logo) and is madly in love with Mexican magical realist artist Jade Leyva, his wife of nearly 13 years.