Brooklyn Jazz Hero
Drummer Andrew Drury’s Brooklyn-based Soup & Sound parlor series is a scene that champions boundless sound, shared by adventurous musicians and audiences alike. In his living room or in community gardens and other such congenial spaces, far and wide, he has provided visibility and opportunity for a global community of improvising and experimental musicians. From roots in 1980s and ‘90s activities he initiated in Connecticut and Seattle, Andrew has worked for decades to activate the transformational power of jazz and other improvised music – indeed, internationally. He has brought over 1500 music workshops to public schools, prisons, museums, homeless and battered women shelters, enclaves of Kurdish refugees, North American tribal lands and remote Guatemalan and Nicaraguan villages as well as the five boroughs of New York City.
The soup metaphor is apt for Andrew’s musical endeavors, which are characteristically warm and nourishing, artistic creations in which boundaries dissolve, ingredients blend, and flavors greater than the sum of the parts emerge. With the founding of Continuum Culture & Arts in 2015—the non-profit extension Drury’s decades of activity—his reach has expanded to touch on community spaces in historically and economically marginalized areas of the U.S., and prying open gates of established cultural institutions.
His current project, FLY!, is based on the power and joy of drums. Its initial program have been in partnership with the Low Income House Institute in Seattle; Stay Strange, a San Diego-based grassroots arts organization, the Urban Voices Project on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and the Nashau Soup Kitchen and Shelter in Nashua, New Hampshire. He expects to be operational in 11 U.S. cities by 2025. May Andrew Drury, Jazz Hero, gain the support he deserves to create places for here-and-now improvised music, for people who invent and for those who benefit from its vibrations.
By Melanie Dyer
