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, hired by a veritable who’s who of jazz greats and appearing on over 350 albums. He has made four albums as a leader—including Dubai, which was a New York Times Number 1 Jazz Album of the Year, and was recently honored by Modern Drummer magazine as “one of the 50 Crucial Jazz Drumming Recordings of the Past 100 Years.”

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 age 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.

His latest release, Valse Sinistre (Cellar Live), was named, among other accolades, Number 3 on the Top 40 Albums of 2022 by JazzTimes, and was a Downbeat Best Album of 2022. In addition, Drummond is a highly respected educator who has taught some of the current generation’s best young drummers while juggling a busy touring schedule with his duties as Professor of Jazz Drums at the Juilliard School of Music and NYU. “Billy Drummond embodies the spirit of jazz in its most demanding, rooted and original.” (Jazz Hot, France)