Billy Martin of Medeski Martin and Wood.
I saw them live a year ago, playing the stuff that became the album Free Magic: Live.
MMW is great in general (damn, I should have nominated Medeski in the jazz pianist thread…). Martin illustrates that a drummer can be a supportive cog in a machine while at the same time being a creative and personal voice. (As do Medeski and Wood.) Free Magic illustrates this better than some of their albums, more acoustic and less rowdy electronics, it starts with some novel percussion work.
In fact, I interpret the request for a “drummer” as “percussionist”. It’s not just drums.
. My son, a musician, said he didn’t know a Motian was still around — Motian is a force in jazz drumming, the man is badass! People who study the history more than I do say that he drove the move of drumming to more than just a rhythm section. So I went browsing in my library (this was in the Sooloos era, Roon precursor). Of course, a drummer often does not show up as the album artist, even though Motian does more than most, he is a composer and leader. But with Roon, I can find his other appearances which are legion. Motian played on some of Bill Evans’s seminal albums in the 1950s. Since then, he has played with many of the great and less well-known names of jazz: Peacock, Jarrett, Corea, Hancock, Haden, Crispell, Rava, Bollani, Pieranunzi, Frisell, Lovano, Stenson, Jormin… But he also plays with many young, up-and-coming people in my library, like Anat Fort and Ben Monder…
