Roy Haynes, a Rhythmic Wonder of Jazz, to Be Feted This Spring

Among the most significant percussionists

“One of the seven wonders of modern jazz” according to Billboard magazine, drummer Roy Haynes will be honored as 2009 Jazz Master in Residence at Harvard University on April 15-18. This is the 32nd year the Office for the Arts has collaborated with the Harvard Jazz Bands to honor distinguished artists in jazz. A working musician since 1942, Haynes’ unrelenting sense of swing has graced the bands of a who’s-who list of jazz innovators.

“Roy Haynes has played with practically all of the jazz masters: Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane,” said Tom Everett, Director of Harvard Bands, “In each instance, he was able to integrate his own unique voice into the ensemble while fostering the musical intent and design of the leader. His tightly tuned drums create a crispness and clarity that is his signature sound.”

Haynes paid a preliminary visit to Harvard earlier this term to rehearse with undergraduates in the Monday and Sunday Jazz Bands. On Friday, April 17 at 4 pm in Lowell Hall, he will talk about his career and creative process in a Learning From Performers conversation moderated by Tom Everett; the event is free and open to the public. Haynes will also perform in a tribute concert with the Harvard Sunday and Monday Jazz Bands on Saturday, April 18 at 8 pm in Sanders Theatre. Tickets are $15 for the public, and $8 for students and seniors, available through the Harvard Box Office, 617.496.2222 (TTY, 617.495.1642), boxoffice.Harvard.edu.

In addition, Haynes will be interviewed by jazz journalists, and he will meet with faculty, staff and students from area schools and universities including Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, as well as with fellows of Harvard’s Neiman Foundation for Journalism.

Born in Boston on March 13, 1926, Haynes has been keenly interested in jazz ever since he can remember. As he recalls, “A teacher in school once sent me to the principal, because I was drumming with my hands on the desk in class. My father used to say I was just nervous. I’m always thinking rhythms, drums.”
Primarily self-taught, he began to work locally with musicians like the Charlie Christian-inflected guitarist Tom Brown, bandleader Sabby Lewis, and Kansas City blues-shout alto saxophonist Pete Brown, before getting a call in the summer of 1945 to join legendary bandleader Luis Russell (responsible for much of Louis Armstrong’s musical backing from 1929 to 1933) to play for dancers at New York’s legendary Savoy Ballroom. When not traveling with Russell, the young drummer spent much time on Manhattan’s 52nd Street and uptown in “Minton’s,” the legendary incubator of bebop, soaking up the scene.

Haynes has worked across a wide spectrum of innovation: he was Lester Young’s drummer from 1947 to 1949; he worked with Bud Powell and Miles Davis in 1949; he became Charlie Parker’s drummer of choice from 1949 to 1953; he toured the world with Sarah Vaughan from 1954 to 1959; he did numerous extended gigs with Thelonious Monk in 1959-60; he played and recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet from 1963 to 1965; and he has intermittently collaborated with Chick Corea since 1968 and with Pat Metheny during the ’90s.

Haynes has been an active bandleader from the late ’50s to the present, featuring artists in performance and on recordings such as Phineas Newborn, Booker Ervin, Roland Kirk, George Adams, Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Ralph Moore and Donald Harrison. A perpetual top-three drummer in the Downbeat Readers Poll Awards, he won the Best Drummer honors in 1996, and in that year received the prestigious French Chevalier des l’Ordres Artes et des Lettres.

Jazz programs at Harvard University were initiated in 1971 by Tom Everett and have developed in conjunction with the Office for the Arts at Harvard since 1976. Artists such as Benny Golson, Eddie Palmieri, Jim Hall, Jon Hendricks, Jane Ira Bloom, Joe Lavano, and Benny Carter have participated.

For more information contact Tom Everett (617.496.BAND, everett@fas.harvard.edu) or OFA Director of Programs
Cathleen McCormick (617.495.8676 or cathleen_mccormick@harvard.edu).

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