Michael Waldrop, a professor of percussion at EWU and a multi-time recording artist, recently released a new CD. Origin Records released the CD—Time Frames—on April 10. It is also available on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon.
Waldrop is a drummer, percussionist, composer and music educator. He is notable as a virtuoso percussionist in both jazz and classical idioms; with equal focus on drumset and keyboard percussion. Highlights from Waldrop’s prior work include releasing the critically acclaimed CD Time Within Itself, performing as the drum set artist at the 2016 International Jazz Educator’s Network Festival, and performing and recording with a number of world-class artists.
Time Frames features the marimba as a melodic instrument and celebrates its origins as an African percussion instrument, creating provocative rhythmic undercurrents to offset soaring melodies and improvisations.
“Infused with influences from minimalism, popular music, and other styles and genres, but always informed with musical sensibility, harmonic sophistication and intelligence,” says percussionist Gordon Stout in his review of the CD. “Most importantly, Michael Waldrop is a staunch devotee of both mallet keyboard percussion and all things drumming… an impressive musician and player in all respects. There is so much diversity of music on this CD… everyone will certainly find a lot to love.”
The video below highlights a studio session from CD featuring Ivana Cojbasic (piano) and Waldrop (marimba) performing Nathan Daughtrey’s composition Almost Beyond.
