Glen Velez

Born in Texas to parents of Mexican descent, Glen Velez ranks among today’s foremost percussionists. The frame drum serves as his primary instrument, an implement whose lineage reaches back to ancient Mesopotamia. Beyond performance, he immersed himself in the drum’s ceremonial functions across early ritual traditions, thereby establishing himself as a specialist musicologist. His knowledge reaches audiences through countless concerts and joint projects, yet he also devised an original pedagogical system for the frame drum, produced corresponding instructional videos, conducts international workshops, authors books and essays, and created a signature series of drums for REMO. These accomplishments have positioned him as the preeminent authority on the instrument and a boundary-crossing innovator whose work unites rock, jazz, world, classical, and postmodern idioms. He further synthesized disparate regional techniques into a single, personal language.

At seven, an uncle who played drums first awakened his interest in percussion. During adolescence he absorbed bebop recordings and experimented with various instruments in jazz contexts. In 1967, at eighteen, he turned toward classical percussion, relocated to New York, and entered the Manhattan School of Music, where Fred Hinger taught him circular phrasing as an alternative to linear Western development; through Hinger he encountered the music of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Early in 1969 he returned to Dallas to consolidate these ideas through intensive practice and enlisted in the army, performing in a military band. By 1973 he was again in New York, beginning a fifteen-year association with minimalist composer Steve Reich that included numerous recordings and ensemble appearances.

In the early 1980s his attention shifted to hand drumming; the frame drum became his central focus, prompting a departure from classical percussion because, as he later observed, it lacked improvisation. Contact with Paul Winter in 1983 led to membership in the Paul Winter Consort, an ensemble founded in 1967 and among the earliest exponents of world music. Parallel to this affiliation he launched a solo career whose recordings emphasize intricate polyrhythms on frame drum and additional percussion alongside his signature overtone singing. The debut album Handance, made with drummer Layne Redmond, appeared in 1984; the title also names his integrated teaching approach, which unites voice, bodily gesture, and drumming and is illustrated in the video The Glen Velez Handance Method. That same year he joined the German fusion label CMP Records, remaining with it for the following decade. Internal Combustion, issued in 1985, again featured Redmond. Seven Heaven (1987) incorporated the atmospheric bansuri flute of Steve Gorn.

In 1989 John Cage composed “Composed Improvisation for One-sided Drum with or without Jangles” expressly for Velez. The same year brought the release of Assyrian Rose, which introduced French hornist John Clark and pianist-harmonica player Howard Levy. Ramana followed in 1990; Doctrine of Signatures appeared in 1991 without Redmond yet once more with Gorn. Border States, whose guiding principle might be summarized as complex and spiritual music realized on simple instruments, came out in 1993, succeeded by Pan Eros, after which Velez concluded his relationship with CMP. In 1996 he collaborated with Spanish saxophonist-clarinetist Javier Paxariño on the project Temurà and issued Rhythmcolor Exotica with his newly formed Handance Ensemble. His tenure with the Paul Winter Consort ended in 1998.

Thereafter he has performed principally as a soloist while continuing selective partnerships with artists including singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, fusion guitarist Pat Metheny, classical clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, and Swedish jazz bassist Jonas Hellborg. Rhythm of the Chakras, subtitled “Drumming for the Body’s Energy Centers” and released the same year, reflects his investigation of Indian chakras—energetic centers described in Hindu and Buddhist traditions—and their translation into sound. DRUM! magazine named him Best World Beat Percussionist in 1999. Breathing Rhythms appeared in 2000. Like its predecessor, the album treats music as a spiritual and healing agency, an outlook the “shaman with a briefcase,” as Paul Winter once called him, developed through prolonged study of percussion traditions as both ancient inheritance and vehicle for personal inquiry.