Jamey with cellist Yo-Yo Ma
Simon, Betty Buckley, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Simon
inherent natural subatomic boogie that is their
Shaheen, the Assad Brothers and Yo-Yo Ma. How
indigenous music...
do you see your role as a percussionist when
performing with such a diverse range of artists?
All the leaders you mentioned in your question
changed my life, but none more than saxophonist
Dave Liebman. Dave is a jazz master and he
The way I view it now is that people get culturally
believed in me. I played in his band for 11 years. He
imprinted from a young age, and those lessons come
never told me what to play and always gave me
naturally, no matter how complex the language or the
enough space to orchestrate the music with any
music or the sport; if you have any talent at all, it just
instruments of my choice. I learned so much in that
comes naturally. It takes practice but it is never
period. My confidence grew playing with Dave, and
considered hard. I really thought I had a thing for so
the worldwide Jazz community had a chance to hear
many cultural styles of music because I understood
me too. There was so much positive energy around
some form and surface information about them. In
it was hard not to want to take it as far as you could
truth, almost any of the music styles I have come to
musically.
love and explore are much deeper than I ever
imagined. Although I may know more about them
You have a large collection of percussion
than the next guy, the player who is truly of that
instruments (over five hundred) – and you have
culture knows intuitively that I do not have the
also invented some new instruments of your own.