Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Visit Bill’s online store for exclusive and signed items: https://www.shorturl.at/adnpq
Subscribers here will know we’ve been running a series called BRUFORD SOLO SPOTLIGHT designed to highlight some of my solo efforts in many different styles over many years, commencing 1972 and running up to 2006. There are (or soon will be) eleven performances culled from my efforts with eight different ensembles and nine different drum configurations. Hope you’ve been enjoying some of them. This is number ten: the group is Earthworks.
I’m aware most drummers are unlikely to ever have an improvised solo, like this, well recorded and filmed, and globally available physically and digitally. I’m enormously privileged to be one of the few who do. My efforts to describe what’s going on with my head, hands and feet at the moment of invention fall short by miles, but be assured I’m completely ‘in the moment’ as they say; a three minute ‘moment’ that can feel like about one minute or less. Generally it goes like this:
Fifty people in the room, or five thousand, fade into darkness. My colleagues disappear from my peripheral vision. I’m dimly aware that I’m too brightly lit. I’m also aware that my hands are running away with me; that there is not enough variation in timbre, tempo, rubato, groove, or dynamics; or that there is too much variation. Either way, I need to quieten my brain so it will stop reviewing my efforts even as I make them. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, mate” says my head. “Didn’t work out last time you tried that sort of thing”. “Isn’t this going on a bit long? Lost the shape, have we? Oh, dear”.
My ever-unhelpful head eventually stills itself and I find a sweet spot where things are back under control and time isn’t rushing past at that headlong speed. What feels like seconds has been several minutes and I’m drenched in sweat. I have no idea whether I’ve connected with anyone or not.
But we performers always need to be putting out as if it were the last performance we shall ever give. There is always some thirteen-year old out there in the dark who will come up to you a few years down the road and say: “That gig you did, in that tiny town, my town, with fifty people? Your playing changed my life”. Those are the great days.
#drummer #yes #music #kingcrimson #jazz #livemusic #drumming #musicimprovisation #tamadrums #paistecymbals #billbruford
Visit Bill’s online store for exclusive and signed items: https://www.shorturl.at/adnpq
Subscribers here will know we’ve been running a series called BRUFORD SOLO SPOTLIGHT designed to highlight some of my solo efforts in many different styles over many years, commencing 1972 and running up to 2006. There are (or soon will be) eleven performances culled from my efforts with eight different ensembles and nine different drum configurations. Hope you’ve been enjoying some of them. This is number ten: the group is Earthworks.
I’m aware most drummers are unlikely to ever have an improvised solo, like this, well recorded and filmed, and globally available physically and digitally. I’m enormously privileged to be one of the few who do. My efforts to describe what’s going on with my head, hands and feet at the moment of invention fall short by miles, but be assured I’m completely ‘in the moment’ as they say; a three minute ‘moment’ that can feel like about one minute or less. Generally it goes like this:
Fifty people in the room, or five thousand, fade into darkness. My colleagues disappear from my peripheral vision. I’m dimly aware that I’m too brightly lit. I’m also aware that my hands are running away with me; that there is not enough variation in timbre, tempo, rubato, groove, or dynamics; or that there is too much variation. Either way, I need to quieten my brain so it will stop reviewing my efforts even as I make them. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, mate” says my head. “Didn’t work out last time you tried that sort of thing”. “Isn’t this going on a bit long? Lost the shape, have we? Oh, dear”.
My ever-unhelpful head eventually stills itself and I find a sweet spot where things are back under control and time isn’t rushing past at that headlong speed. What feels like seconds has been several minutes and I’m drenched in sweat. I have no idea whether I’ve connected with anyone or not.
But we performers always need to be putting out as if it were the last performance we shall ever give. There is always some thirteen-year old out there in the dark who will come up to you a few years down the road and say: “That gig you did, in that tiny town, my town, with fifty people? Your playing changed my life”. Those are the great days.
#drummer #yes #music #kingcrimson #jazz #livemusic #drumming #musicimprovisation #tamadrums #paistecymbals #billbruford
