Max Roach

b. 10 January 1924, New Land, North Carolina, USA. Beginning to play drums in his pre-teen years, Roach later studied in New York and by 1942 was active in the bebop revolution. As a member of the house rhythm section at Monroe's Uptown House and a regular at Minton's Playhouse, he backed all the leading practitioners of the new art. Along with Kenny Clarke he established a new drummers' vocabulary, and his work with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie from this period demonstrates his inventiveness and masterly technique. In addition to playing bebop, the '40s also found him working in small and big bands led by such swing era veterans as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter. Towards the end of the decade, however, he a bandoned the older style and was henceforth one of bebop's major voices. He was with Miles Davis for two years from 1948, participating in the seminal BIRTH OF THE COOL recording dates. In 1954 Roach formed a quintet with Clifford Brown, a band which was one of the most musically inventive of the period. Brown's accidental death in 1956 was a devastating loss to Roach and it took many years for him to fully shake off the traumatic effect it had upon him. From the late '50s Roach began to take a political stance and was active in many black cultural projects. Inevitably, his work of this period took on elements of his commitment to Civil Rights issues. His compositions included the WE INSIST! FREEDOM NOW SUITE. He also experimented with unusual line-ups, sometimes a bandoning conventional time structures. In these respects he was in line with concurrent developments in free jazz, but was never a true part of that movement. His own small groups saw an impressive array of talented musical partners including Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, George Coleman and Stanley Turrentine. He also worked with a variety of singers and vocal groups, including performances with his wife Abbey Lincoln. In the '70s, although he was by then becoming an elder statesman of jazz, Roach continued to associate with musicians of the avant garde, recording duo albums with Abdullah Ibrahim, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. One of few drummers to perform and record extended solo works, Roach achieved a remarkably high standard of performance and overcame the customary negative critical response to such works. Throughout the '80s and into the early '90s, Roach continued to perform and compose, finding time to teach and to maintain his activism in black politics. One of the most technically-gifted musicians in jazz, Roach has long been a major figure in the development of the music and his consistently high standard of performance has never faltered. As a drummer, he is a master of all aspects of his work, a mastery which he demonstrated during his 1990 UK tour by playing as an encore a thoroughly absorbing ten-minute solo using only the hi-hat cymbal. If there is another jazz drummer capable of such feats he has yet to appear in public.