Tim Whalen is a partner, co-founder and Creative Director of the Chicago Producers Circle.

Since the early 1980s, Tim has been a Chicago area songwriter, singer, pianist and performer. His band Taxi was a club regular until their breakup in 1990. At that time, Tim began working on a variety of collaborations with Chicago-based writers, film makers, musicians and songwriters. That endeavor eventually became Madman Creative Productions, and a small studio was built around the concept, first in Rogers Park and then moving to Bucktown.

In 2000, Tim realized that in order to move “the circle” to a higher level, he needed to fund the project more cost-effectively and also needed to collaborate with more serious partners. He accomplished both by moving the entire studio to Joliet, Illinois. There he began creating a first-class production facility. Additionally, he partnered with engineer and producer Jeff Thompson.

Tim was educated at New York University, where he studied classical piano performance and composition, as well as myth and comparative religious literature. Since then, he has studied jazz performance with Tim Barton, Joan Hickey and The Bloom School. He has also studied at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

These days, Tim’s main focus is on executive producing a variety of projects. Among them, he has sponsored Wild About Learning – a project dedicated to teaching literacy to young children through music and performance. Additionally, he has co-sponsored The Uhlich Voices Project – a rap album created by emancipated teens of the Illinois DCFS child welfare system.