Daniel Gary Thomas, professionally known as Gary Thomas, is a Black American jazz saxophonist and flutist from Baltimore. JazzTimes called him one of the more uncompromising and original saxophone voices of his generation. His performing career included work with Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, Cassandra Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Kevin Eubanks and Ravi Coltrane. He also played in Herbie Hancock's quartet and Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition band.
As a bandleader he recorded a body of work that critics took seriously in its own decade. Two of his albums as a leader, By Any Means Necessary and While the Gate Is Open, were named by DownBeat among the best recordings of the 1990s.
In 2001, Thomas founded the jazz-studies degree program at the Peabody Conservatory. Johns Hopkins identifies him as the conservatory's first Black director of a degree program, and he held the Richard and Elizabeth Case Endowed Professorship in Jazz. His work there connected teaching with the experience of performing and recording internationally. He compared leading a band with guiding students, saying, "The students want the teacher to be able to do what he's trying to teach them to do. I liked being a [band] leader at times. I'm sort of the same thing at Peabody."
