John Bergamo

John Bergamo ( born May 28, 1940 in Englewood, New Jersey, † October 19, 2013 ) was an American drummer and composer.

Life and work

Bergamo visited 1959, the Lenox School of Jazz in Lenox Massachusetts and studied until 1962 at the Manhattan School of Music. He was a pupil of Max Roach (drums), Percy Heath and Kenny Dorham (jazz ) and Gunther Schuller, Marshall Stearns and George Russell (music theory and history ).

In 1962 he took part in the Darmstadt summer courses; next he attended summer courses at Tanglewood. In 1964 he came to the Creative Associates of the State University at Buffalo, a group of musicians under the direction of Lukas Foss, the performance of the avant-garde works of the 20th century and was dedicated to the composer George Crumb, among other things, Sylvano Bussoti, Mauricio Kagel and Fred myrow, percussionist January Williams, bassist Buell Neidlinger, the oboist and saxophonist Andrew N. White III, the singer Carol Plantamura, Sylvia Brigham Dimiziani and Larry Bogue, trombonist Vinko Globokar, the violinist Paul Zukofsky, the clarinetist Sherman Friedlander, the cellist Jay Humeston, pianist Michael Sahl, the violist Jean Depuey and flutist Karl Kraber belonged.

Since the late 1960s, he also studied non-European percussion traditions: Indonesian at KRT Wasitodiningrat and I Nyoman Wenten, African Alfred and Kobla Ladzekpo and Indian at Ali Akbar Khan, Mahapurush Misra, Shankar Ghosh, Swapan Chaudhuri, TH Subashchandran, T. H. Vinayakram, T. Nathan Rank, Poovalur Srinivasan and PS Venkatesan.

Since 1970 Bergamo Koordinatior of the percussion program at the California Institute of the Arts was ( CalArts ). In 1976 he founded with Larry Stein, Ed Mann, James Hildebrandt, Greg Johnson, Paul Anceau and Steven Mosko, the percussion group Repercussion Unit in 1997 with Andrew Grueschow, Randy Gloss and Austin Wrinkle percussion group Hands On'Semble. He worked with musicians such as John McLaughlin and Robert Shaw, with whom he undertook a tour of the Soviet Union, and at times with Frank Zappa Abnuceals Emukka Orchestra.

Besides a number of albums Bergamo took several videos for percussion lessons on, played in soundtracks of movies with published articles in professional journals and composed works for percussion instruments.