Tommy Reilly began playing the violin at the age of eight, and a few years later he took up the harmonica. Shortly before the Second World War, he toured Europe's variety theatres as a harmonica player and was held in internment camps in the German Reich as a citizen of an enemy country when the war broke out. During this time, he developed the classical way of playing the harmonica and thus opened up the instrument to classical music.

After 1945, he became a well-known figure throughout Great Britain via radio. He became a popular harmonica soloist for classical concerts all over the world.

In 1951, Michael Spivakovsky composed a concerto for harmonica for him on the occasion of a British music festival. Since then, 30 other works have been dedicated to him by well-known composers such as Gordon Jacob, Ralph Vaughan Williams and James Moody.

He wrote the fundamental theory book ‘Play Like the Stars’ for players of the chromatic harmonica. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.