TJ Dumser makes music with a purpose.
In a world that often moves too quickly, he crafts ambient soundscapes that help listeners pause, reflect and breathe.
His project Six Missing started in 2017 with experimental guitar loops (layered performances of the instrument recorded in real time) before evolving into a distinct voice in the ambient music world. The name comes from a supernatural experience Dumser said he had at a West Chester, Pennsylvania recording studio near the site of the Battle of Brandywine, where six soldiers remain unaccounted for.
“I want to pay homage to whatever the heck happened to me,” he said. “The project just became Six Missing because the music, I felt, is existing on two planes—the spiritual and the physical. That’s really like where the project aims to take people—from this hecticness of life into a more peaceful, serene state.”
The project also grew from Dumser’s personal journey with anxiety and depression. For years, he created music mostly for himself, producing wordless, instrumental soundscapes.
Over time, the Yorktown native, now Austin-based, composed and released work through small independent labels. He eventually signed with Nettwerk Music Group in 2021, a Canadian label known for launching artists such as Avril Lavigne.
“There was a lot of nothingness for a few years—three, four years, nobody listened—and it was just me doing it for me,” he said. “I've been with them ever since. And that's really when the music started finding a larger audience.”
Dumser takes on a hands-on approach to production, using vintage instruments rather than AI.
“I really like to keep the human in the driver's seat as much as I can,” he said.
That philosophy aligned with Amazon Music, which featured him alongside a couple of other ambient artists in their Amazon Originals program for World Mental Health Month this October.
“We really started focusing on creating this wellness-type of music for people that are working from home, commuting or writing, or walking, meditating, or trying to sleep,” he said. “Through that, we began developing a relationship with streaming platforms. Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music was one of the ones that puts a real human emphasis on the curation of wellness music.”
The project culminated in a Times Square billboard celebrating his work, a moment he shared with his wife, Hanna Sender, and parents, who still live in Yorktown. He called the moment of seeing himself on the billboard a “New Yorker’s dream come true.”
“It was surreal,” he said.
Music has been central to Dumser’s life since childhood. Though his family is not musically trained, they encouraged him from an early age. He said in so many of his childhood photos, he can be found with an instrument in hand.
“As far back as I can remember, TJ has always connected with music. While he loved to sing, dance and perform in his early years, he really seemed to find his true happy place when he began playing and creating music with his guitar,” his mom, Terri, said.
“It’s been incredibly moving to watch him realize his dreams as an artist and it’s even more exciting to see where his journey will take him next.”
Dumser recalled to Yorktown News the early days, when he received his first guitar as a student at Mildred E. Strang Middle School.
“I was in a band with my friends, and my dad was right there supporting me, carrying my amps into bars that I shouldn’t have been allowed to play in.”
Tom Dumser, TJ’s father, is proud of how his son’s talents have developed and the man and professional he has become.
“TJ was always enamored with the sounds of the recordings and he could hear every single instrument that was used and played in that recording,” he said. “He would listen to the records over and over again and keep listening for notes and sounds that he may have not heard previously and then would be so excited when he did hear that note and understand how it was created.”
Yorktown music programs, and teachers such as the high school’s band director Emily Kluga, helped the 2005 YHS graduate refine his skills, teaching him how to listen, blend and arrange within ensembles—lessons he carried into his own projects. He recalled always being a supporting person in other people’s projects, so when he started creating music for himself, he thought, “Let me take this energy that I put into other people's work and put it into my own and just see what happens.”
Kluga worked with Dumser in her first years teaching at YHS. He was in her first AP Music Theory class and helped write an arrangement of the school’s alma mater, originally composed shortly after World War II. She remembers him as a frequent presence in the music wing and a dedicated advocate for renovating the high school auditorium.
She called him “a very talented, passionate and mature student musician and an excellent leader,” and said Dumser “had an amazing motivation and drive to create his own musical agenda and collaborations; singing, playing drums and guitar in jazz combos, rock bands, and writing and performing his own music.”
Even as the years go by, music continues to serve as a connector between people and moments.
A friend of Dumser’s family shared with him that during long days in the hospital with her husband, they would play his ambient music instead of watching the television. The music gave them a quiet space to be together without words.
Even after her husband passed, she continued listening, finding it brought her closer to him.
“The fact that music can make those moments between people like that—that's why I take it so seriously, and why it feels so sacred to me to create this type of music,” Dumser said, adding that his musical journey has already been satisfying.
“I think I'd be happy if all of this went away tomorrow and nobody listened ever again,” he explained. “It would be that I had a really fun time doing this, and I've enjoyed it fully.”
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