edforbes - jazz drummer - drum tutor

Ed Forbes is a jazz drummer and drum tutor.

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His drumming and work career has taken him across Europe over the past 30 years and, while not quite old enough to have been around to be part of the hardbop era, he discovered jazz and the drumming of Art Blakey at an early age and has been jazzing it ever since.

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Having inherited the drumming gene from his grandfather who was a drum major in a Scottish pipe band, he acquired his rudiments from traditional drumming and subsequently took lessons from acclaimed Scots percussionist and drummer, Andrew Shivas.

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Early performing and recording work started with a progressive school band and subsequent performance and session work with a post punk band. During the 90s while at university in London, he became immersed in the resurgent jazz scene gigging and touring both in the UK and Europe.

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Having trained as a lawyer and journalist, he spent the late 1990s and noughties working in television as a correspondent and producer before moving to the legal world specialising in media & intellectual property law.

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In 2014 he took the decision to expand on his true passion, namely jazz drumming and drum practice. He has subsequently become involved in several drumming and music-related collaborations, community projects, workshops and tuition.

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His drumming style is improvisational, adaptive and individualistic and heavily influenced by those who inspired him such as Art Blakey, who along with fellow jazz giants, Max Roach, Elvin Jones & Tony Williams, forged the free and experimental approach that propelled jazz drumming through the 1950s and 1960s to cement the influence and relevance it has today. While firmly rooted in jazz he maintains an extensive and evolving knowledge and repertoire across all genres from funk, breakbeat, hip hop, 70s emerging pop and afrobeat through to mainstream pop and rock. His skills as a player are founded on an ability to listen as much as play, giving space to the other instruments and the music, phrasing, improvising and getting deep down into the groove.

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In 2016 Ed Forbes received endorsements from Istanbul Agop Cymbals and Los Cabos Drumsticks.