Tom Torriglia is a multi-Grammy-nominated songwriter, musical entertainer and president of both Festa Records and Pierce-Beach Publishing. Tom has been delighting audiences with his music since 1969. Tom primarily plays the accordion, but also plays piano, keyboards, bass and guitar. Tom performs with an Italian-American band (Bella Ciao), and has performed with an oldies band (Gold Lame'), a wedding band (Stardust), a 10-piece accordion band (Those Darn Accordions) and a traditional polka band (The Squeegees). Tom is the world's foremost composer of Italian-American music - a musical genre that he has been trying to re-invigorate over the past 25 years. He has recorded four albums (Legends of the Italian Lounge,Festivus Italiano, Limoncello Time and Antipasto Rock) that contain many new classic Italian-American songs. Tom's The Pasta Song was re-recorded and used for three straight years in a Carrabba's Restaurant national TV commercial. His arrangement of the partisan anthem Bella Ciao was used on a daytime American TV show and his music has been piped into Italian restaurants all across America as part of the Mood Media catalogue. Another one of his many food-related songs, The Cannoli Song, was used on the website of the Brooklyn Cannoli Company. Over the years, he has also written and recorded rock, pop, polka and even Christmas songs! Tom came up with the idea and spearheaded the effort to make the accordion San Francisco's official musical instrument. The measure passed in 1990. Tom is the sponsor of National Accordion Awareness Month (NAAM) which is June. Tom's efforts in promoting the accordion have seen him featured in People Magazine, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and countless other newspapers both domestically and internationally; and TV stations/programs including ESPN, Good Morning America, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc. In 2025, Tom will receive an MA in international business of music from the University of Chichester.
On a non-musical note, Tom is an adjunct professor of American business English; a business ESL instructor; author of the Nighttime, Good-Time Guide to San Francisco (1988,1990); founder of the National Association for Good Grammar (NAGG) and chief of the grammar police in San Francisco.
Tom was born in 1953 in San Francisco and is of northern-Italian (Ligurian) descent. He holds dual citizenship with both the United States and Italy and currently resides in Genova.