March 2016

Musician Series Featuring Billy Drummond
Enjoy the Music.com's Musician Series focuses on legendary talents from around the world.
Article By Steven R. Rochlin

  This edition of Enjoy the Music.com's special Musician Series, hosted by Creative Director Steven R. Rochlin, features Professor Billy Drummond. Year before being a Juilliard and NYU Professor, drummer and audiophile Billy Drummond first came to prominence in the late 1980s with his world-class musicianship joined by Horace Silver, J.J. Johnson, and Sonny Rollins. As one of the great drummers of his generation, Billy Drummond is in high demand and has performed on more than 300 albums! As an accomplished bandleader and purveyor of "fertile, exciting music" according to the New York Times, Billy also has several recordings under his own name - including Dubai that was voted as the very best within a Top Ten Best Jazz CDs of 1996. He currently leads his band, Freedom of Ideas, in New York.

Born in Newport News, Virginia, Drummond grew up listening to his father's extensive jazz record collection that includes the likes of Max Roach, Miles Davis, James Moody, Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins and The Three Sounds. Encouraged by his father, who was also a drummer and saxophonist, Billy was given his first drum at the age of four and was playing in local bands and formal training to read music by the time he was eight. After graduating from Shenandoah Conservatory of Music, where he studied classical percussion for two years before switching to jazz, Billy Drummond moved to New York at the behest of Al Foster in 1988. In very short time he was recruited to the young band Out of the Blue (OTB) and recording Spiral Staircase for Blue Note Records before becoming a member of Horace Silver's Sextet.

Since then, Drummond's highly musical, versatile and powerful playing has been called upon in the studio and on the bandstand by the jazz world's elite, including Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Carla Bley (as a member of Carla Bley and the Lost Chords), Chris Potter, Lee Konitz, Eddie Gomez, Buster Williams, Nat Adderley, George Cables, Charles Tolliver, Andrew Hill, Steve Kuhn, Hank Jones, Joe Lovano, Christian McBride, Joe Locke, NEA Sheila Jordan, Larry Willis, Javon Jackson, Archie Shepp, Charles McPherson, Tony Malaby, Eric Reed, Eddie Henderson, Marty Ehrlich and international artists Franco Ambrosetti (Switzerland), Karin Krog (Norway), Sadao Wantanabe (Japan), Toots Thielmans (Belgium), Barney Wilen (France), Tommy Smith (Scotland), Yakov Okun (Russia) and Tony Lakatos (Hungary).

Drummond, while continuing to maintain a busy touring schedule, is also a highly respected educator. He is currently Professor of Jazz Drums at the Juilliard School of Music and NYU in New York and gives private lessons and workshops around the world.

Our new Musician Series will feature special guests who have immense talent and share their love of music with the world. For over 20 years Enjoy the Music.com has provided you valuable information about music, musicians, headphones, amplifiers, turntables, DACs, loudspeakers, and more! We truly hope you appreciate Enjoy the Music.com's special Musician Series of videos. Our video interview with Professor Billy Drummond is below and as always in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the Music,

Steven R. Rochlin

You can save 25% off Billy's latest Hi-Res Music album available on HDtracks!