Composer, Percussionist, Singer-Songwriter, Visual Artist and Educator Gerry Hemingway is a widely acknowledged contributor to the continuum of creative music for the past five decades. He was born in 1955 in New Haven, Connecticut to a family with musical interests and in the 1970’s was an intregral part of the creative music community in New Haven along with Anthony Davis and Wadada Leo Smith.
He led a number of critically acclaimed quartet & quintets beginning in 1985 through 2013 as well as being a member of a wide array of collaborative groups including BassDrumBone (who celebrates its 47th anniversary in 2024), Brew w/Reggie Workman & Miya Masaoka, GRH trio with Georg Graewe and Ernst Reijseger, the Swiss based WHO trio with Michel Wintsch and Baenz Oester, and the newest collaborative trio, MingBauSet with Vera Baumann and Florestan Berset. He has a long history of duo projects, most recently with pianist Izumi Kimura and over many years with Marilyn Crispell, Samuel Blaser, Thomas Lehn, John Butcher, Ellery Eskelin, Jin-Hi Kim. Mr. Hemingway is a Guggenheim fellow and has received numerous commissions for chamber and orchestral works. He is well known for his eleven years in the Anthony Braxton Quartet, his ongoing participation in projects with Reggie Workman including the collective trio Brew, along with his performances and recordings (approximately 200 until now) with some of the world’s most remarkable improvisers and composers including Cecil Taylor, Mark Dresser, Earl Howard, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowski, Simon Nabatov and so many others.
In 2020 Mr. Hemingway turned his attention and his producing skills to his ability as a singer and songwriter. In November of 2022 he released what he considers to be his most personal and ambitious project “Afterlife” on his own label Auricle Records which he founded in 1978. He currently lives in Switzerland having worked in the faculty of the Hochschule Luzern between 2009 and 2022.