If the Sounds Good Choir were a baseball team, Tom Wolff would be a utility infielder—the guy who shifts between shortstop and second base and plays both positions well. In choral parlance, Tom might be called a utility vocalist. That’s because he can come into the lineup and sing tenor or bass equally well. Currently he is singing bass in Arlington Heights and tenor in Oak Park/River Forest and Wheaton/Glen Ellyn.

Tom joined Sounds Good during our inaugural season (2016) when we launched choirs in Hinsdale and Oak Park/River Forest.  “Singing with Sounds Good has made me a more confident singer,” Tom says. That’s borne out by his experience in Arlington Heights this session, where he is one of only three basses.  “After being out of town for the first month of rehearsals this winter, I walked in, and I was the only bass that day. I had not practiced any of the music. Yet I knew enough to sing with confidence, and I knew where I made mistakes. It’s a challenge. It’s learning. I can see my progress. I love singing both parts.”

Paul Langford, who conducts the Arlington Heights choir, appreciates Tom’s flexibility: “Tom brings a lot of energy and joy to our choir.  He’s always friendly, upbeat, eager to sing tenor or bass. . . whatever we need.”

For several seasons Tom was one-half of what may have been the only father-son duo in the Sounds Good Choirs. His father, Jay Wolff, joined the choir in 2018 at age 91. “My father listened to music all his life,” Tom recalls. “I grew up listening to his classical record collection.”  After being in the audience at several Sounds Good concerts, the elder Mr. Wolff told his son, “I’ve heard enough of your singing. I’m going to sing in the choir.” Then he taught himself how to read music.  Father and son sat side by side at rehearsals in Arlington Heights and sang together in several concerts until a few months before Jay Wolff’s death in 2022. Tom acknowledges the tremendous support the basses and other singers in Arlington Heights gave to his dad.

Sounds Good Choir is not Tom’s only musical pursuit. He plays clarinet in the Naperville Municipal Band, which he joined in 1998, and has accompanied Sounds Good Choirs a few times in concerts. He sings in the High Holiday Choir at Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville, which was his first choral singing experience when he joined with his late wife, Marcy.  Tom met Marcy at Stanford University when she was a senior and he was a graduate student in chemistry. Marcy then left for UCLA Medical School, but not until Tom had proposed. She became a family physician. Marcy died in 2002 after a 12-year battle with breast cancer. They had two children, Ilana, a nurse, and Joe, an engineer. Tom has been married for nearly 20 years to Barbara, a Stanford friend of his and Marcy’s. Barbara, an attorney, sings with Tom at Congregation Beth Shalom and in the Sounds Good Summer Rocks choir.

Tom retired in 2021 after a 40-year career, initially as a research chemist for Amoco Chemicals, before making a timely move early in the digital age. “When I decided I’d had enough of the lab, I shifted into intellectual property as a Patent Agent and Chemical Information Specialist at Amoco, then BP.” In that role he provided information that helped chemists, engineers, and managers decide if they had patentable inventions, or could operate freely from others’ patents. “It’s like being a reference librarian,” he explained. “I used to say, ‘If you can’t find it on Google, call me. I can help you get the answers you need.’”

He took a severance package from BP in 2006 and formed Wolff Information Consulting, which he describes as the best phase of his professional career. Although patented products and processes can generate billions of dollars in profits, “Inventors almost never make money from patents,” Tom maintains. “That’s not the business process. You come up with a novel idea, but how does it get implemented? You need money, you need capital, you need a lot of luck. And by the time you go through that whole process, the world may have changed. The chances that something you invent will go to market are very small, and you are not likely to make a lot of money on it.” For example, Tom had two patents on specialty polyesters like the PET that is used for water and soda bottles. The patents would have made improved plastic beer bottles or a new generation of video magnetic tapes. “What are those?” he says now. One idea that came to fruition is a toothbrush for use on hospitalized patients. “It’s a wonderful device,” Tom says, “But the process of bringing it to market reduced the inventors’ equity so much that any profits are not likely to fund their retirements.”

Sometimes Tom had to deliver bad news to clients who hoped they had developed a new process or product. “But it’s not bad news if they were about to invest a lot of time and money in a process or product that they couldn’t patent,” he says. Timing is critical too. “I worked with a marijuana specialty products chemist. He was brilliant. He was fun to work with. But he was ahead of his time. There were so many regulations around starting new marijuana growing facilities in Illinois—it just didn’t happen for him. He got laid off before he could impact the business with his chemical creativity.”

Asked if the USA is still good at invention, Tom said, “I would say yes, although artificial intelligence is playing a big part, and we are being impacted by the Chinese and the Europeans. If something is new and novel, it doesn’t matter where it was invented. But I have no reason to believe we are falling behind.”  What worries Tom is the current generation’s lack of appreciation for how to find critical information.  Because there aren’t many independent patent search specialists still working, companies, law firms and inventors generally use low-cost search firms or search online. Tom likens them to travel agents and bank tellers: “You may be able find them when you need them, but most people don’t appreciate the added value they bring, and there aren’t many of them left.”

Although he says he retired “cold turkey” three years ago, Tom has no problem filling the hours he used to spend at work. “I’ve always been athletic. I have a lot of energy,” he says. As an undergrad at MIT, he earned six junior varsity letters in soccer, lacrosse, and ice hockey (“none of which I was particularly good at”). A lifelong runner, he’s completed three marathons, and played soccer into his 60s. Now he bicycles regularly, usually covering 30 or more miles several days a week on his road bike, and almost as much riding desert trails in Scottsdale, AZ, when visiting Barbara’s mother and siblings. Tom is also active at Congregation Beth Shalom, where he regularly chants Torah at Shabbat services, and is currently teaching his second class of Adult Bnai Mitzvah students—activities that involve learning, reading, singing, and teaching Hebrew. The goal is not to become fluent, but rather to read and understand source material important in understanding Judaism.

“So, here’s my life: athletics, music, Judaism, and family,” Tom reflects. “I always figured when I got too old for athletics, I’d still have music. Now I do both, and more.”

At our Spring 2024 Sounds Good Choir concerts, this “utility singer” will be on stage at Arlington Heights, Oak Park/River Forest, and Wheaton/Glen Ellyn. You may also see him at the Gold Coast all-choir concert, proudly occupying the seat his father once filled. “I will probably sing tenor, except in Arlington Heights,” Tom says, “But I sing where they need me.”