Keith Copeland

Born to Ray Copeland, who once played trumpet in Thelonious Monk’s band, Keith Copeland forged an independent reputation as a jazz drummer. His skills as a session musician placed him on more than eighty albums alongside Johnny Griffin, Johnny Hartman, George Russell, Milt Jackson, John Dankworth, Paul Bley, Stan Getz, Harry "Sweets" Eddison, Phil Woods, Stephane Grappelli, Sonny Fortune, and Charles Brown.

Beyond studio work, he spent five years in the Billy Taylor Trio and a year and a half with the Heath Brothers, toured seven months with Stevie Wonder, and, beginning in 1986, collaborated intermittently with Hank Jones. Since forming his own ensemble in 1984 he has released five albums—On Target, The Irish Connection, Round Trip, Live in Limerick, and Postcard From Vancouver.

Copeland joined the faculty of Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1975 and remained there until 1978; during the mid-1980s and early 1990s he also instructed at Rutger's University, Queens College, Long Island University, and the New School University of New York. In 1992 he accepted a professorship in jazz percussion at the Hochschule Für Musik in Koln, Germany, and later taught at the Hochschule Für Musik in Mannheim-Heidelberg as well as the Hochschule Für Musik in Mannheim.

Having begun to play drums at age ten, he studied with Gene Morvay, Walter Perkins, Fred Buda, and Alan Dawson. From age fifteen he performed with various wedding and bar mitzvah bands, and before turning seventeen he sat in with Barry Harris and Charles McPherson at Harlem’s Minton's Playhouse. After enlisting in the United States Air Force he trained in telecommunications and cryptography in Greenland and Germany, then used the G.I. Bill to attend Berklee College of Music, where he was recruited for the seven-month Stevie Wonder tour. His first book, Creative Coordination for the Performing Drummer, appeared under the imprint of the Carl Fischer Publishing Company.