Eric Harland is the sort of drummer who can conjure the music out of just about anything: Video

08.11. – Happy Birthday !!! Multi-Grammy Nominated Drummer, Eric Harland is the most «In demand drummer» of his generation. He has already been on close to 200 recordings at his age of 36.

Eric has been recognized in the Boston Globe, New York Times, JazzTimes, Modern Drummer, All About Jazz, The New Yorker, DownBeat, L’uomo Vogue and other prominent publications.

It has been his privilege to share the stage with masters such as Betty Carter, Joe Henderson, MyCoy Tyner, Michael Brecker, Terence Blanchard, Branford and Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, Savion Glover, Bill Cosby and many others, as well as todays up and coming artist like Esperanza Spalding, Jane Monheit, Taylor Eigsti, Julian Lage, Stacie Orrico and so on.

His current list of performing groups are “JAMES FARM” with Joshua Redman, “PRISM” with Dave Holland and Kevin Eubanks, “SANGAM” with Charles Lloyd and Zakir Hussain, “Charles Lloyd New Quartet”, “OVERTONE” with Dave Holland, Jason Moran, Chris Potter and “VOYAGER” Eric’s own widely recognized group. But Eric doesn’t stop there, he also manages to fit in many collaborations with world renowned artist like Les Claypool “PRIMUS”, “DISPATCH” the band, John Mayer, Spike Lee, Mariah Carey, Randy Jackson from “AMERICAN IDOL” and etc.

Through Harland’s extensive travels, he has come to realize that «The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation.»

When Eric Harland contributes… his intention is therefore to create the highest musical experience sothat every listener may have insight… into the musical moment.

Eric Harland is the sort of drummer who can conjure the music out of just about anything. And when you are this sort of drummer, you get asked to play with a lot of different musicians. When he joined us for this field recording, Harland was in the middle of playing three sets with three different bands in under five hours at the 2011 Newport Jazz Festival.

One of those gigs was with the trumpeter Avishai Cohen and his band Triveni. Right after they finished with their set, we absconded with both trumpeter and drummer into an abandoned quadrant of Fort Adams State Park for a little experiment. Watch as Harland squats and annexes a rusty piece of scrap metal for a makeshift ride cymbal. The following improvisation seems to just fall into place.