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Gregg Bendian

Gregg Bendian was born on July 13th, 1963 in Englewood, New Jersey. His family lived in Fairview NJ, until moving to Teaneck NJ at the age of seven. Gregg grew up in a house where music was always in the air.

His parents, Martin and Patricia, were great music lovers and he was exposed to a wide range of music very early on in life. From Sinatra and Tchaikovsky to Simon & Garfunkel, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis and The Beatles - The Bendian household enjoyed it all. This no doubt had a huge impact on the way Gregg approaches music today. In 1971 The Bendian family moved to Teaneck and this had a profound effect on Gregg's artistic development. The town had an excellent school system and one of the finest arts programs in the country. For the first time he was directly exposed to various forms of African-American culture. He heard jazz, funk and R&B music at many of his friend's homes. A new world was opened.

Gregg began rudimental drum studies at the age of nine with Wells Jenny and played in the school orchestra. During junior high school, he began piano and theory studies, and for the first time began writing his own music. Gregg played drums in rock and jazz bands with friends, learning covers of popular songs and immediately starting to perform original material. Throughout the 1970's Gregg became obsessed with the music of the progressive rock and jazz/rock fusion era. He listened fervently to bands such as Gentle Giant, Gong, Genesis, King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Return to Forever, Weather Report, and especially, The Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The intricate rhythms and contrapuntal composing style of each of these bands greatly influenced Gregg's ears and his thinking about music in general. This propelled Gregg to study classical percussion under Gary Van Dyke of the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble. During his high school years Gregg also completely immersed himself in composing chamber music.

He studied seriously under composer Jeffrey Kreske of William Paterson University and devoured the music of Edgard Varese, Anton Webern, Charles Ives, Stefan Wolpe, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Elliott Carter. Gregg also studied drumset with rhythm innovators Andrew Cyrille and Steve McCall at their Greenwich Village studios during his senior year of high school and attended a great many concerts of the new jazz at the important New York loft space Soundscape, and at The Public Theater.

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Radio & Podcasts

Tribute recordings for Mahavishu Orchestra, Miles Davis and John Coltrane

Read "Tribute recordings for Mahavishu Orchestra, Miles Davis and John Coltrane" reviewed by Len Davis


A feature on tribute releases from The Mahavishnu Project, Yo Miles with Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Kaiser. Steve Morse with a tribute to Steely Dan. Steve Lukather pays tribute to John Coltrane and Mike Stern plays Miles Davis. The music of Jeff Beck from Eric Johnson and and the band Trinity pay tribute to Weather Report.Playlist The Mahavishnu Project “Trilogy" from Music of John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu orchestra (Aggregate) 00:00 Yo Miles “Jabali Pt 2" from ...

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Album Review

Dave Bryant: Night Visitors

Read "Night Visitors" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman didn't record much with piano players. Exceptions were Geri Allen on Sound Museum: Three Women and Sound Museum: Hidden Man, released simultaneously in 1996 on Harmolodic / Verve, and Dave Bryant on Tone Dialing (Harmolodic / Verve, 1995), during Coleman's Prime Time days.Bryant's immersion in Coleman's sound—he has conducted master classes in the alto saxophonist's Harmolodic theory and performance at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music—lays the foundation ...

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Profile

Gregg Bendian

Read "Gregg Bendian" reviewed by Bill Milkowski


Since the early '90s, drummer Gregg Bendian has distinguished himself as an adventurous and accomplished player-composer through his sideman work with the likes of Derek Bailey, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, Peter Brotzmann and Pat Metheny while also leading his own Interzone Quartet and Trio Pianissimo. His most recent recording is the startlingly virtuosic solo drum project Research, on his own Aggregate Music label. But Bendian's most passionate undertaking in recent years has been his Mahavishnu Project (MP), the ...

276
Album Review

Gregg Bendian: Research

Read "Research" reviewed by John Kelman


All-percussion ensemble albums are rare in any genre. Still, by digging deep, it's possible to find exceptional discs like Swiss percussionist Pierre Favre's Singing Drums (ECM, 1984) and, more recently, The New Percussion Group of Amsterdam's Go Between (Summerfold, 2007), proving that percussion needn't be just about the rhythm.

Solo percussion albums are even less common. The chameleon-like Gregg Bendian--who can just as easily be found performing left-of-center form and function with his Interzone group as propelling his Mahavishnu Project ...

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Interview

Gregg Bendian: Inner Flame, Musical Visions

Read "Gregg Bendian: Inner Flame, Musical Visions" reviewed by Ian Patterson


“Being an American musician means being adventurous. The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions. You know, music which at one time was considered primitive, uncultured, savage, whatever it may have been...dangerous above all...and recognizing that in this music, lots was being said. Perhaps some of the most important, cutting edge things were being said." (Michael ...

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Album Review

Gregg Bendian's Trio Pianissimo: Change

Read "Change" reviewed by John Kelman


Building on the deep interaction of Balance--originally released in 1998 but recently reissued by TrueMedia JazzWorks--Change finds Trio Pianissimo continuing to explore, evolve, and integrate percussionist/composer Gregg Bendian's diverse musical interests. While the piano trio represents Bendian's most intimate setting to date, that doesn't mean that Change operates in conventional terms. It is, in fact, a bold, in-your-face recording that even better meshes disparate elements including free jazz, contemporary classical through-composition, and even a little progressive rock.

Still, that's not ...

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Album Review

Bendian, Gauthier, Liebig, Stinson: Bone Structure

Read "Bone Structure" reviewed by Walter Kolosky


Bone Structure is something different: post-jazz fusion-progressive rock-electronica-jam band music that features a wily sinister vibe. Some of the infectious grooves are reminiscent of those laid down by Ginger Baker and Jonas Hellborg on Baker's very fine and underrated Unseen Rain from several years back. Other influences can be heard as well. From time to time guitarist G.E. Stinson sounds remarkably like John McLaughlin from Miles Davis' Live Evil. There are also allusions to works such as Weather Report's “Mr. ...

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Interview

Mahavishnu Project's Gregg Bendian Interviewed at AAJ

Mahavishnu Project's Gregg Bendian Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz

Drummer Gregg Bendian knows all about adventurous music making; for over twenty years, this classically trained musician has led a number of stylistically diverse, forward-looking groups, whose leitmotif is controlled improvisation.

And if it is true what they say about the company you keep, then collaborations with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist John Zorn, and guitarist Nels Cline and Derek Bailey speak volumes about Bendian's musical vision. This musical vision has driven Bendian over the last five years ...

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“The chameleon-like Gregg Bendian—who can just as easily be found performing left-of-center form and function with his Interzone group as propelling his Mahavishnu Project through a remarkable performance. Research may reflect Bendian's ever-searching, ever-evolving approach to music, but it's also a complete, self-contained statement that, though not appearing to be for the faint-of-heart on the surface, yields unexpected rewards for those brave enough to pay attention.”  --John Kelman (AllAboutJazz.com)

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Night Visitors

SE Records
2020

buy

Research

Aggregate Music
2008

buy

Return to the Emerald...

Cuneiform Records
2007

buy

Change

Aggregate Music
2005

buy

Bone Structure

Cryptogramophone
2003

buy

Requiem for Jack Kirby

Atavistic Records
2002

buy

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