Andrew Drury is a drummer, composer, improviser, and organizer who has performed in 30 countries and on over 70 recordings, pioneered extended wind and friction techniques for drums, who All About Jazz called “one of the most adventurous drummer/percussionists in creative music today, and a dedicated humanitarian.”
A mentee of the legendary drummer Ed Blackwell, Drury’s projects range from solo performance and collaboration to leading and playing with ensembles of all sizes—most recently The Forest (a cooperative percussion quintet with Michael Wimberly, Lesley Mok, Leah Bowden, and Gustavo Aguilar), Content Provider (a quartet featuring Ingrid Laubrock, Briggan Krauss, and Brandon Seabrook), his Tentet, and groups led by Jason Kao Hwang, J. D. Parran, Gwen Laster, and Alan Braufman.
Drury has had the pleasure of working with artists such as Christine Abdelnour, Sarah Bernstein, Karl Berger, Thomas Buckner, Cooper-Moore, Joseph Daley, Kris Davis, Robert Dick, Michel Doneda, Mark Dresser, Michael Evans, Peter Evans, Augustí Fernandez, Satoko Fujii, Charles Gayle, Wayne Horvitz, François Houle, Earl Howard, James Ilgenfritz, Darius Jones, Eyvind Kang, Frank Lacy, James Brandon Lewis, Annea Lockwood, Miya Masaoka, Alexis Marcelo, Myra Melford, Butch Morris, Ras Moshe Burnett, Dafna Naphtali, Lee Odom, Aruán Ortiz, Stuart Popejoy, Tomeka Reid, Stephanie Richards, Roswell Rudd, Angelica Sanchez, Ursel Schlicht, Elliott Sharp, Wally Shoup, Wadada Leo Smith, Warren Smith, Hans Tammen, John Tchicai, Maria Valencia, Reggie Watts, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, to name a few.
Having previously led over 1,500 percussion workshops in prisons, housing projects, schools, shelters, Indian reservations, with Kurdish refugees in Germany, in remote villages in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and in 20 universities on three continents, in 2015 Andrew co-founded a non-profit organization, Continuum Culture & Arts. Continuum continues this work by supporting world-class music and the communities that surround it through programs in vulnerable communities around the US, through Soup & Sound performances (200 of them as of 2024) in Drury’s house and in public spaces around Brooklyn and beyond. Continuum also promotes international cultural exchange, houses the Different Track Productions label for recordings (and one book), hosts artist retreats in Brooklyn and New Hampshire, and documents the contemporary music scene through video and oral history while working behind the scenes in many ways in support of other artists and organizations. In recognition of this work the Jazz Journalists Association named Drury a “Brooklyn Jazz Hero” in 2023.
