Bio:
Drummer, composer, and educator Adam Cruz was born in New York City and has been a vital creative force on the international jazz scene for the last two decades. He leads his own group, is an integral part of renowned pianist Danilo Perez’s trio, and regularly works with artists such as Tom Harrell, The Mingus Big Band, Joey Calderazzo, Chris Potter, Steve Wilson and Edward Simon. Adam currently teaches at CCNY and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.
As a drummer, Adam represents a unique place in the American jazz lineage. His mixed ethnic background informs his playing in ways that transcend easy stylistic categorization. The wealth of his rhythmic knowledge, his deep sense of jazz swing and his knowledge of Latin American rhythms, all coalesce into his personal sound, giving his playing a powerful depth and a rare and distinctive musicality.
Adam first emerged professionally in the early 1990’s, performing and recording extensively with saxophonist David Sanchez and the Charles Mingus Big Band. He toured with pianist Chick Corea, recording Origin - A Week at the Blue Note. He spent the end of that decade touring as a duo with guitarist Charlie Hunter, and then began his long-term association with pianist Danilo Perez in 2000, along with bassist Ben Street.
Adam studied at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts and The New School for Social Research, where he received his BFA and his teachers included Joe Chambers, Keith Copland, Kenny Washington, Frank Malabe, Victor Lewis, Lewis Nash and Portinho.
He was first introduced to music by his father Ray Cruz, a renowned New York-born percussionist of Puerto Rican heritage. His mother hails from a rich musical background as well. She is the daughter of Italian-American trumpeter Ricky Trent (who worked with Paul Whiteman and Tommy Dorsey) and Mildred Kapner, a Jewish-American dancer. The diversity of Adam’s background is greatly reflected in his work as a musician and educator.
In 2010, he was awarded a grant from the ACFM to record Milestone, his much anticipated-debut recording as a composer and bandleader. Milestone was released in 2011 on Sunnyside Records to great critical acclaim by the Los Angeles Times, Downbeat Magazine, and Jazz Times among others. The New York Times described the album as "Informed by several strains of Latin music but just as meaningfully by brisk post-bop and lyrically minded free jazz… featuring intricately shifting counterpoint” and “brilliant surging solos.”
Throughout his illustrious career as a drummer, Adam has toured and recorded with artists as diverse as Danilo Perez, Tom Harrell, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Pharaoh Sanders, John Patitucci, Eddie Palmieri, Joanne Braackeen, Chris Potter, Edward Simon, Steve Wilson, Charlie Hunter, and Lee Konitz. He continues to maintain a busy performing and teaching schedule, sharing his talent, knowledge and experience with appreciative fans all over the world.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Drummer Adam Cruz pairs flawless technique and a crystalline touch with a level of prophetic intuition that is awe-inspiring.”
- Modern Drummer
“Adam Cruz is the classic drummer bandleader, in the tradition of Philly Joe Jones and Elvin Jones, who knows how to stroke the fire from the proverbial engine room, but he’s gone the extra mile on Milestone in crafting quite a solid compositional woodpile of original music.”
- Downbeat Magazine
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).