One of the most outstanding percussionists of today, the American Hamidas Drake, impressed the audience of "Vilnius Jazz" last year with the project "Turiyja", reminiscent of this musician's inspiration - the famous jazz creator Alice Coltrane. "She inspired me to have a spiritual and aesthetic openness that I constantly nurture," said the artist.
All the stars want to make music with H. Drake because of his creativity and inexhaustible arsenal, fascinating instrumentation, ethnic colors and rhythms and variety of genres. Countless projects and recordings have brought Drake together with Pharoah Sanders, Marilyn Crispell, Misha Mengelberg, Wayne Shorter, Malachi Thompson, Archie Shepp, Joe McPhee, Matthew Shipp, David Murray, Michael Zerang, Bill Laswell, Mats Gustafsson , Sylvain Kassap, Borah Bergman, Toshinori Kondo and other jazz greats.H. Drake was born in Louisiana and later moved with his family to Illinois, near Chicago. Here he played drums in rock and rhythm and blues bands until he met saxophonist Fred Anderson, who became his longtime stage partner.
With J.Anderson's group, the drummer recorded his debut albums, through it he met the influential figure of experimental music, George Lewis, and other members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an important engine of the Chicago experimental scene. to expand their activities.
He also became a member of the Gambian kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso's Mandingo Griot Society, immortalized in the group's first album. H. Drake also played music with his childhood friend, percussionist Adam Rudolph, in various lineups. And in 1978, H. Drake's long-term partnership with "free" jazz trumpeter Don Cherry (1936-1995), whom he also calls his teacher, was established.
Over the next decade, Herbie Hancock, Jim Pepper, Pierre Dørge and other prominent improvisers added to H. Drake's colorful circle of partners. He also played in the Latin jazz group Night on Earth, the Norwegian pianist Georg Gräwe's quartet, the DKV Trio with Kent Kessler and Ken Vandermark, one of Chicago's oldest experimental jazz groups, Liof Munimula.After J. Anderson's death in 2010, saxophonist P. Brötzmann and double bassist William Parker became the most stable companions of the percussionist
In 2018, H. Drake started playing alongside his long-time partners and with the Chicago avant-rock band Mako Sica, releasing two albums with it. As a project leader and co-leader, he has been featured on numerous albums for various record labels. The last ones were recorded with P. Brötzmann and the African "guembri" virtuoso Maâlem Mokhtar Gania, with Mat Walerian, M. Shipp and W. Parker, with the "Karuna Trio" in which he plays with A. Rudolph and Ralph M. Jones, also with a pianist Irene Schweizer.
In 2022, H. Drake was chosen (not for the first time) as the best percussionist of the year in a poll of critics of the legendary music magazine "DownBeat".
