Casey Driessen announces the third video from Fiddle/Sticks featuring Jamey Haddad, the follow-up to the sessions with country music drummer Kenny Malone and musician/inventor Roy “Futureman” Wooten. Fiddle/Sticks is a collaborative exploration of rhythm which pairs GRAMMY nominated fiddler Casey Driessen – the leading voice in percussive fiddle/violin technique (AKA The Chop) – with a list of the landmark drummers and percussionists of our time. Cutting across all genres and traditions, the project documents these rhythmic explorations through recordings, videos, photos and journals.
Jamey Haddad is regarded as one of the foremost world music and jazz percussionists in the U.S. He is a professor of performance and improvisation at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, on faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a past professor of Boston’s Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. A member of Paul Simon’s band, Haddad is a three time recipient of National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Fulbright Fellowship, and can be heard on over 200 recordings.
Haddad, being of Lebanese descent, started his percussion career playing the darbuka with his family and at parties, and by the age of 12 was actively gigging on drum set. In college he was introduced to South Indian drummer Ramnad Raghavan, with whom he studied with for 4 years. He has traveled the world, studying and absorbing drum patterns and culture, and integrating these lessons back into jazz and contemporary music. Haddad’s ice breaking move in a new country? “Just hang out.”
Fiddler Casey Driessen is a bold genre crosser who listens for inspiration from Tennessee to Tibet. A GRAMMY nominee, Casey regularly tours as a one man, one fiddle, one pedalboard live looping project called The Singularity, and has recently been on the road with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He has released three albums and his new fiddle/percussion video project Fiddle/Sticks, successfully raised $15,000 via Kickstarter in June 2012.
