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Gerry Hemingway

Gerry Hemingway, Composer, Percussionist, Singer-Songwriter, Visual Artist, Educator, has been a widely acknowledged contributor to the continuum of creative music for the past five decades. He was born in 1955 in New Haven, Connecticut to a family with musical interests (his grandmother had been a concert pianist and his father studied composition with Paul Hindemith). He became interested in drums around the age of ten and by the age of seventeen was supporting himself as a professional musician primarily in the jazz and bebop traditions. In the 1970's, New Haven was home for a number of interesting musicians. This was where Gerry first met and played with Anthony Davis, Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis and Anthony Braxton. In the late 1970's, Hemingway, trombonist Ray Anderson, and bassist Mark Helias formed a collective trio which they eventually named BassDrumBone. In celebration of their 40th anniversary in 2017, the group released “The Long Road” with special guests Joe Lovano and Jason Moran.

He joined and remained a member of the Anthony Braxton quartet for eleven years from 1983 - 1994. In 2007 he and Anthony Braxton had a historic reunion as a duo resulting in a 4 CD release on Mode/Avant entitled "Old Dogs (2007)". In the late 1980's he began performing with the Reggie Workman Ensemble who at different times included Oliver Lake, Jeanne Lee, Marilyn Crispell, John Purcell and Don Byron among others. He was a core member of Anthony Davis' Episteme Ensemble, and has performed and recorded as a featured soloist on Mr. Davis' violin concerto "Maps" as well as the operas "Under the Double Moon" and "Tania" (released recently on Koch Classics). Hemingway also performed in duet with pianist Cecil Taylor in May of 1999 on the invitation of De Singel in Antwerp, Belgium.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Hemingway has become increasingly prominent as a composer and improviser and a leader of several long standing quintets and quartets of international acclaim (see below). In addition to receiving fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation on the Arts, he has also received four commissions through the Parabola Arts Foundation with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts, including a 1998 grant supporting the creation of the "The Visiting Tank", which concludes his Tzadik release of "Chamber Works". In 1993, he premiered a commission from the Kansas City Symphony with funding from Meet the Composer for a concerto for percussionist and orchestra entitled "Terrains". In June of 1998 a co-composition with the Amsterdam based composer Guus Jannsen was commissioned by the NPS radio of the Netherlands and performed at the Holland Festival. Entitled "Cycles", the work used a unique computer controlled conducting system that allowed the ensemble to play in multiple tempos.

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8
Album Review

Rodrigo Amado The Bridge: Beyond The Margins

Read "Beyond The Margins" reviewed by John Sharpe


The Bridge may be one of the most potent all round units assembled by Portuguese tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado. That is saying something considering his previous alliances with collaborators as varied as multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, trumpeter Peter Evans, trombonist Jeb Bishop and drummer Chris Corsano. This time out his partners read like an extract from an international free jazz who's who: German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, American drummer Gerry Hemingway and Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. Beyond ...

10
Album Review

Rodrigo Amado: Beyond The Margins

Read "Beyond The Margins" reviewed by Troy Dostert


The aptly titled Beyond the Margins is just the latest entry in tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's burgeoning catalog, and it is certainly further proof that Amado is among the most exciting and accomplished practitioners of free music in the jazz world. Each new release seems to allow him to hone his craft with ever-greater precision, and with an even wider range of emotional resonances. And with a line-up of free jazz veterans that includes pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, bassist Ingebrigt ...

17
Album Review

Rodrigo Amado / The Bridge: Beyond The Margins

Read "Beyond The Margins" reviewed by Mark Corroto


You might think saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's quartet The Bridge is an allusion to Sonny Rollins' performing and recording hiatus between 1959 and 1961. One spent practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge which links Manhattan and Brooklyn. Besides the name, Amado's previous release, Refraction Solo Live At Church Of The Holy Ghost (Trost, 2022), his first unaccompanied recording, draws inspiration from Rollins' sound and references some of the great man's music. More likely, Amado's bridge is the span linking the ...

11
Album Review

Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway: Kairos

Read "Kairos" reviewed by Ian Patterson


In ancient Greek kairos means the right time for action. The word relates both to archery and weaving. It is an apt title for pianist Izumi Kimura and drummer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway's debut duo album, as in-the-moment intent, precision and intricacy course through their dialogues. No strangers to one another, they first played as duo in 2016, and then in a trio with Barry Guy on Illuminated Silence (Fundacja Sluchaj, 2019). Compositional credits are shared, though the structures are really frames ...

4
Album Review

Day and Taxi: Live in Baden

Read "Live in Baden" reviewed by John Sharpe


With only seven releases over its 30 plus year history, the Swiss band Day & Taxi, led by saxophonist and composer Christoph Gallio, is not exactly over documented. That is a shame as it has been a consistently stimulating outfit which takes an expansive view of the free jazz tradition. Gallio has been the only constant of the group's existence, but the current incarnation since 2018 comprising bassist Silvan Jeger and celebrated American drummer, now residing in Switzerland, Gerry Hemingway ...

Album Review

WHO Trio: Strell - The Music of Billy Strayhorn & Duke Ellington

Read "Strell - The Music of Billy Strayhorn & Duke Ellington" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Nel 2018 il Who Trio ha festeggiato vent'anni di attività, varando per l'occasione il progetto Strell, dedicato alla rilettura del repertorio di Billy Strayhorn e Duke Ellington, operazione certo non nuova--tutt'altro--e per la quale la prospettiva di rilettura, l'angolo visuale, diventa di conseguenza basilare. In questo album, inciso quasi per intero in studio a Losanna nel maggio 2019 (fa eccezione “Passion Flower," ripresa dal vivo un anno prima nella stessa città), il lavoro di scavo e ricostruzione (o ...

Live Review

Brda Contemporary Music Festival 2019

Read "Brda Contemporary Music Festival 2019" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


Brda Contemporary Music Festival Šmartno (Slovenia) Casa della Cultura, Chiesa di San Martino 12-14.09.2019 Il minuscolo villaggio di Šmartno (San Martino) sorge sulla sommità di un'altura del Brda sloveno, terra ricca di ottimi vini, gemella del vicinissimo Collio friulano. Qui si svolge da nove anni il Brda Contemporary Music Festival, per iniziativa del vivace, attivissimo batterista Zlatko Kaučič. Il borgo fortificato è avvolto ancora dalle mura trecentesche, con sei basse torri cilindriche e un ...

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63

Recording

Gerry Hemingway Quintet, Riptide

Gerry Hemingway Quintet, Riptide

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards

Gerry Hemingway has been deftly mixing it up on drums with some of the most accomplished new jazz artists for years. He has a new album out with his quintet, Riptide (Clean Feed 227), and it shows how he is a jazz composer and bandleader of note as well. First, the quintet itself: along with Gerry on drums are a formidable two-reed tandem of Oscar Noriega and Ellery Eskelin, the electric guitar smarts of Terrence McManus, and the acoustic and ...

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Recording

Gerry Hemingway Quintet: "Demon Chaser" on Hatology 673

Gerry Hemingway Quintet: "Demon Chaser" on Hatology 673

Source: All About Jazz


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Performance / Tour

Terrence McManus/Mark Helias/Gerry Hemingway at The Stone (NYC) on January 1

Terrence McManus/Mark Helias/Gerry Hemingway at The Stone (NYC) on January 1

Source: All About Jazz


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Performance / Tour

Terrence McManus/Ellery Eskelin/Gerry Hemingway at Stain Bar on December 16

Terrence McManus/Ellery Eskelin/Gerry Hemingway at Stain Bar on December 16

Source: All About Jazz


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Recording

Georg Graewe, Ernst Reijseger & Gerry Hemingway: Sonic Fiction on Hatology 638

Georg Graewe, Ernst Reijseger & Gerry Hemingway: Sonic Fiction on Hatology 638

Source: All About Jazz

Georg Graewe -piano, Ernst Reijseger -cello & Gerry Hemingway -percussion This trio's music is easier characterized than described, since the wealth of colors, moods, textures, and melodies is fluid enough to shift not only from piece to piece, but moment to moment. There is, for me, a European aesthetic at work here, a blend of modern and historic sources with the added bittersweet spice of folk elements from the soil. It's a delicate, demanding juggling act, drawing on past experiences ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Live in Baden

Clean Feed Records
2023

buy

Kairos

Fundacja Sluchaj
2023

buy

Beyond The Margins

Trost Records
2023

buy

Twice

Aqua Piazza Records
2021

buy

Cerebral Caverns

Postcards
2021

buy

Strell - The Music of...

Clean Feed Records
2020

buy

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