Sonny Rollins
Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
Joe Corsello in On The Beat
Joe talks about his years with Modern Drummer, Benny Goodman, Sonny Rollins and more. Hello MD! To begin, in 1976 I received a phone call from a guy who said he was going to come out with a quarterly drum…
2012 Detroit Jazz Festival Releases Star-Studded Lineup
World's top jazz artists among the headliners for this year's festival The 33rd annual Detroit Jazz Festival will feature a lineup of today's greatest jazz performers. The artists at this year's festival have been nominated for more than 200 and…
Billy Higgins: The Shape of Jazz
Billy Higgins, who would come to play on more than five hundred albums, including three of the biggest jazz crossover hits of the 1960s (Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder,” and Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance”), was born…
John Guerin: All-Around Powerhouse
John Guerin was one of the most prolific and influential drummers of the L.A. studio scene, contributing to recordings by Frank Sinatra, the Byrds, Thelonious Monk, Lou Rawls, George Shearing, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt, George Harrison, Nelson Riddle,…
The Greats: Jack DeJohnette
When Jack DeJohnette hooked up with trendsetting trumpeter Miles Davis in 1969, the drummer was immediately thrust into the media spotlight as he became a main rhythmic catalyst behind Davis’s revolutionary electronic jazz sound. With that band, Jack appeared on…
Han Bennink: Things No Drummer Has Ever Done
In his video, Solo, Dutch phenomenon Han Bennink does things no drummer has ever done in any performance, much less on video. Han ties ropes around a drumset and then crashes the drums and cymbals together like dominoes spinning in…
Elvin Jones: The Great Liberator
When Elvin Jones moved from his home town in Michigan to New York City in 1956, the jazz-listening world wasn’t quite ready for the drummer’s outer-space conception. His loping, circular sense of swing and abstract, barline-blurring breaks weren’t easy to…
Billy Drummond
As a leader, Billy Drummond has recorded three albums that exemplify his past-meets-future approach, a style marked by an allegiance to yesterday’s jazz masters, but with a forward-thinking bent. The Gift, Dubai, and Native Colours show Drummond to be an…
