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Billy Drummond

Acclaimed by Downbeat as “one of the hippest bandleaders now at work,” Billy Drummond’s thrilling, powerful and highly musical playing has also made him one of the most called-for sidemen of his generation. Mentored in the bands of jazz legends Horace Silver, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, J J Johnson and Sonny Rollins, Drummond is now widely acknowledged as one of today’s most versatile drummers, making sideman appearances with a veritable who’s who of jazz greats on over 350 albums. He has made three albums as a leader—including Dubai, a New York Times Number 1 Jazz Album of the Year—and five as a co-leader, including We’ll Be Together Again in Three’s Company, a trio with Javon Jackson and legendary bassist Ron Carter, which made several Top Ten lists of the Year. Modern Drummer magazine recently honored Dubai as one of the 50 Crucial Jazz Drumming Recordings of the Past 100 Years—”distilling to only 50, a century’s worth of drumming on jazz recordings, which by any reasonable guess would comprise tens if not hundreds of thousands of titles.”

Born in Newport News, Virginia, where he grew up listening to his father’s extensive jazz record collection, Drummond was leading his own bands from the age of eight, and teaching adults from the age of just 14, before going on to study classical percussion at the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music. In the late 1980s, he was encouraged by Al Foster to move to New York, where he was almost immediately recruited to the young band Out of the Blue (OTB), recording Spiral Staircase for Blue Note Records. When OTB disbanded, Billy joined Horace Silver’s Sextet, simultaneously starting life-long associations with Buster Williams and Bobby Hutcherson, and subsequently joining J J Johnson’s band, followed by a three-year stint touring with Sonny Rollins.

Since then, Drummond has performed and recorded with many of the world’s jazz greats, including Horace Silver, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Buster Williams, Steve Kuhn, JJ Johnson, Sonny Rollins, Charles Tolliver, Nat Adderley, Charles McPherson, Eddie Henderson, James Moody, Sheila Jordan, Andrew Hill, Ron Carter, Carla Bley, Eddie Gomez, Larry Willis, Hank Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Konitz, Stanley Cowell, Archie Shepp, Joe Lovano, Javon Jackson, Chris Potter, Eric Reed, Ralph Moore, Vincent Herring, Franco Ambrosetti (Italy), Karin Krog (Norway), Sadao Wantanabe (Japan), Toots Thielemans (Belgium), Barney Wilen (France), Laurent DeWilde (France), Jan Lundgren (Sweden), and Michel LeGrand (France).

“I consider myself very fortunate to have come up playing with some of the innovators of jazz who, in many instances, helped shape the way this music is and will always be played,” says Drummond.

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31
Album Review

Tim Lin: Empathy

Read "Empathy" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Saxophonist Tim Lin, still fresh enough on the scene to be described as a “young lion," tips his horn to a number of his mentors on Empathy, his second album as a leader, following 2021's Romance on Formosa. As on that earlier album, Lin, a first generation Taiwanese-American (from Fremont, CA), has chosen a charming blend of standards and jazz staples to complement a lone original composition, “Fourth Right," by the superb pianist Andy LaVerne. And as before, Lin plays ...

27
Album Review

Skip Grasso: Becoming

Read "Becoming" reviewed by Jack Bowers


If guitarist Skip Grasso's name was not so prominently displayed on the album cover, a listener would be hard-pressed to ascertain that Becoming was his gig. Yes, Grasso does bring a lot to the table, but no more than pianist Anthony Pocetti, bassist Harvie S or drummer Billy Drummond who together round out Grasso's impressive quartet. Grasso has chosen an interesting title for the album, as “becoming" can mean “a process of change" or “gee, that looks ...

2
Radio & Podcasts

Electric and Eclectic

Read "Electric and Eclectic" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


The newest of the new. That's what our podcast brings you, sometimes, anyway, and this episode features four bangers from brand-spankin' 2022. Three of the four offer some “fusion" elements of one kind and another, and the other Mike keeps at arm's length because it edges him into the Jackie attack zone, and long-time listeners know that's not where he likes to be. Also, the boys threaten to eat Pandas, so there's that.Playlist Discussion of Joy Lapps' album ...

35
Album Review

Billy Drummond and Freedom of Ideas: Valse Sinistre

Read "Valse Sinistre" reviewed by Jack Bowers


As one of the world's foremost jazz drummers, Billy Drummond manages to keep busy--so much so that Valse Sinistre, recorded in November 2021, is his first album as leader in more than twenty-five years, following the critically acclaimed Dubai from 1996. This time around, Drummond is at the helm of his Freedom of Ideas quartet: Micah Thomas on piano; Dezron Douglas on bass; and Dayna Stephens on saxophones. Even though he is the nominal leader, Drummond doesn't ...

3
Album Review

Vicki Burns: Lotus Blossom Days

Read "Lotus Blossom Days" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


Who knew “Del Sasser" had lyrics? Part of the joy of listening to new recordings is finding such things out. And Vicki Burns does a convincing job of it. In this intriguing compilation of standards--yes, musicians can record from the Great American Songbook (GAS) without disgracing themselves, no matter what anyone says--bop heads and originals, Vicki Burns acquits herself admirably. She is solid evidence that the singer makes the song, rather than the other way around. ...

5
Album Review

Vicki Burns: Lotus Blossom Days

Read "Lotus Blossom Days" reviewed by Jeff Winbush


Whatever else can be said about jazz, there is little disagreement that it is best experienced in a live setting. Listening to Vicki Burns' Lotus Blossom Days is as close to a front-row seat in a New York nightclub as many of us are likely to get in these times of high fuel costs and crowded airports. Burns is not attempting to blow the roof off with vocal gyrations and tricks. She never oversings as she tries to ...

5
Album Review

Adam Shulman: Just The Contrafacts

Read "Just The Contrafacts" reviewed by Pierre Giroux


For those who may be scratching their heads about the word contrafact, in the jazz medium it designates a musical composition in which a new melody is overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. This form really became prominent in the bebop era, where the artists (who were generally short of financial resources) could create new compositions over which they could improvise and record without worrying about paying royalties for copyrighted materials. During the depths of the ...

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238

Performance / Tour

Jerome Sabbagh Trio featuring Billy Drummond at Smalls on August 12th

Jerome Sabbagh Trio featuring Billy Drummond at Smalls on August 12th

Source: Jerome Sabbagh

Jerome Sabbagh Trio—Smalls—New York Thursday, August 12th @ 9:30 PM Jerome Sabbagh: saxophone Joe Martin: bass Billy Drummond: drums About Jerome Sabbagh Saxophonist and composer Jerome Sabbagh was born in Paris, France and moved to the States at the age of 20. After attending Berklee College of Music in Boston on scholarship for two years and studying with, among others, George Garzone, Bill Pierce, Dave Liebman and the legendary Joe Viola, he moved to New York in 1995. ...

“Billy Drummond embodies the spirit of jazz in its most demanding, rooted and original.” Jazz Hot (France)

“Drummond’s playing has been a dream come true for countless bandleaders over the past three-and-a-half decades. He plays with a quiet authority, akin to the radiant strength of someone who can command the attention of a room without saying a word.” JazzTimes

"The drummer Billy Drummond, 62, has a lot to share. After early-career stints with jazz luminaries like Horace Silver, Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins, he has led compelling straight-ahead combos of his own since the early 1990s, propelling them with his lucid swing feel and his ear to the broader shape of a song." New York Times

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Becoming

Barking Coda Music
2023

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Empathy

Self Produced
2023

buy

Just The Contrafacts

Cellar Records
2022

buy

Valse Sinistre

Cellar Records
2022

buy

On A Mountain

Cellar Music Group
2021

buy

Videos

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