Jaimeo Brown
@ the Love Supreme Jazz Festival
5 July 2014

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Biography

Jaimeo Brown (pronounced jah-mayo) is emerging as one of the preeminent drummers on the new creative music scene. Comfortable in any setting from jazz club to arena concert, Brown began his drum career at age 16 with his father bassist Dartanyan Brown and mother pianist and woodwind specialist, Marcia Miget, and drum teacher, Sly Randolph, himself a Bernard Purdie protégé from Harlem. A 2001 cum laude graduate of the vaunted jazz program at William Paterson University, Jaimeo’s first offer after graduation was to take the drum chair for the Charles Mingus Big Band.

In only 15 years, he has performed with a wide range of musicians including Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana, Q-Tip, Carl Craig, Kenny Garrett, Geri Allen, Greg Osby,Joe Locke Pharoah Sanders and Bobby Hutcherson, with whom he established his national reputation at 19 years of age. According to Hutcherson “Jaimeo is the kind of player, who allows me to play what I hear with no compromises,” continuing he said, “His value as an artist lies as much in his personality and respectful nature as it does in his considerable talent as a percussionist.”

In addition to his own considerable talents as a drummer, clinician and composer, Brown is also the leader of the a new circle of young NYC musicians grounded in the African-American roots of their music and committed to maintaining the community of like-minded musicians dedicated to extending the music well into the new century.

Transcendence is a project that expresses his experiences living in NY for the last 15 years. The songs express his worldview and his own spiritual awakening. Being inspired by the Gee’s Bend spirituals of Alabama, he wanted to bring light to their music and artwork. “I focused on the music of the Gee’s Bend community and the Black spiritual as the root of the material because of its raw unfeigned expression,” said Brown. “Hope is in abundance in these spirituals.” The innovative album weaves a tapestry of African-American spirituals, along with East Indian concepts, electronic textures, acoustic jazz and blues.

“Transcendence” also includes special guest pianists Geri Allen and Kelvin Sholar, vocalist Falu, and his father, former Chase bassist Dartanyan Brown, his mother Marcia Miget, his sister, Marisha Rodriguez, and Jaimeo’s two-year-old daughter Selah.

This year (2014) marks Jaimeo Brown’s seventh album with tenor saxophone giant Greg Tardy and his first recordings with vibraphonist Joe Locke. These recordings, in addition to his solo effort will extend his reputation for percussion that exudes taste and power.

Jazz At Lincoln Center in which Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director, selected Brown to be a jazz ambassador in 2008. As an ambassador, Brown gained extensive experience performing and educating various audiences from around Europe, Eastern Asia and Africa.

Many Jazz musicians are known for their integrity when it comes to their music, and Brown works hard to extend that integrity to every area of his life. He has given countless hours in community service in gritty sections of urban New Jersey giving free- or low-cost music lessons to kids whose parents were unable to provide artistic experiences for their children. He has been a teaching artist for New Jersey Performing Arts Center for the last 10 years.

While receiving his bachelor’s degree and at William Paterson University and Master’s at Rutgers University Brown had the honour of studying under the tutelage of such great educators as Rufus Reid, James Williams, Harold Mabern, Ralph Bowen, Stanley Cowell and Victor Lewis who all served to establish the value of educating younger musicians to the history, heritage and techniques of improvisational music. In 2007 Brown received the prestigious Ralphe Bunche Fellowship to pursue his Masters Degree at Rutgers.

In addition to onstage work, Brown has contributed program material for a PBS original production of Ralph Ellison’s “King of The Bingo Game” and the acclaimed documentary “Twenty Feet From Stardom”. Brown’s work as a composer and arranger has been performed by Rutgers big band at the Blue Note in NYC in 2008. Pianist Allen requested that Brown produce the song “Emmanuel” using his concepts on her 2011 release, “A Child Is Born” (Motéma Records). Brown was recently selected to be a TEDx speaker in which he lectured on “What Will The Year 2113 Sound Like?”

Other musicians Brown has worked with include, Tom Harrell, Rufus Reid, James Williams, Ronnie Cuber, James Moody, Harold Mabern, Mark Whitfield, Brian Lynch, Carl Perazzo, Luisito Quintaro, Nat Reeves, T.K. Blue, Stefan Harris, Bishop Norman Williams, Mel Graves, Mel Martin, Mark Levine, Marcus Shelby, Ed Cherry, Kevin Jones, Brian Horton, Sam Barsh, and Smith Dobson.