Bill Stewart- One of Modern Jazz Drumming's top Drummers

As a drummer, Bill Stewart's playing is distinguished by its melodic focus, and its polyrhythmic, or layered character. To describe someone's drumming style as "melodic" would mean there is a sense that you could "hum along" with discernible linear phrases which tell pieces of a story, akin to a vocalist, pianist, or saxophonist. Stewarts improvisations favor the development and layering of motivic ideas over the raw generation of excitement or display of technical prowess. Stewart has great touch, or dynamic precision, so that his ideas are articulated with an exactness and clarity. He has also achieved a very high degree of independence of his limbs, so that not only the ride cymbal and the snare/toms, but also the bass drum and hi-hat, are free to participate as melodic "first-class citizens." One possible reason for his continued success could be that his drumming is very approachable, being mostly vamp and lick based. Moreover, budding jazz drummers find him to be a very attractive influence because he has essentially taken exercises out of Ted Reed's Syncopation (a popular drum method book) and basic bop drum licks and turned them into music by articulating them fast and cleanly. This makes him very easy to transcribe.


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