Richie Barshay via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Richie Barshay:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Richie Barshay
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Richie Barshay began drumming inside kitchen cabinets at an early age, and continues banging on things worldwide to this day.
Noted for his work with the Herbie Hancock Quartet (2003-2007), he's been dubbed "a major rhythm voice on the rise" by Downbeat magazine, and The Guardian (UK) praises "the arrival of a major innovator who also knows how to have fun."
On tour and recordings his diverse résumé includes Hancock, Chick Corea, Esperanza Spalding, The Klezmatics, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, Lee Konitz, Natalie Merchant, Bobby McFerrin, and Pete Seeger among others.
Since 2004 he has led outreach projects across 5 continents as an American Musical Envoy with the U.S. State Department. Based in New York City, he can be heard on over 75 recordings including his latest release as leader, Sanctuary (2014), featuring Chick Corea.
Contact Information
- Email: richie@richiebarshay.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://richiebarshay.bandcamp.com
- ▶ Twitter: richiebarshay
- ▶ Instagram: richiebarshay
- ▶ Website: http://richiebarshay.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/richiebarshay
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCBzV9MrLFfmsjhx0tHhW_BQ
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/1GoDuKcNVSu8enIWwEffV3
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"Drummer Barshay provided a wealth of energetic support, never losing his nimble way even at the sometimes breakneck paces...He turned the dreaded drum solo segment into an engaging rhythmic call-and-response exercise with the crowd."
Randy Lewis - Los Angeles Times
"Richie Barshay is one of New York's most sought after jazz drummers."
The Seattle Times
"He is one of those players who just needs to breathe on his drum kit to set up a rhythm. His light touch, incorporating tablas, electronic percussion and crisp-sounding cymbals, ensured that there was always an interesting pulse."
The Herald (Edinburgh, Scotland)
“Richie Barshay plays like that.....It’s like a deep fundamental groove that’s always there, no matter how many notes.” Russ Titelman, three-time Grammy Award-winning producer
"Barshay also struck gold with his drum solo on the second to last song, mixing styles and rhythms with ease."
DCMetroTheaterArts
“Then he played, and the tapestry of sound he created - from soft snare rattles and delicate cymbal breezes to electronic percussion - announced the arrival of a major innovator who also knows how to have fun.” “A theme based on a Peruvian rhythm, a twisting Indian tabla feature...confirmed what unusual angles the gifted Barshay comes from. This is just the beginning for him.”
John Fordham - The Guardian (UK)
"This man is a serious percussionist and composer for percussion. Something beneficial has happened to my heartbeat. "
Robert R Calder - PopMatters Music Review
"A player to watch." “He fervently explores the many instruments and rhythms at his beck and call.”
Scott Albin - JazzTimes.
"A fascinating musician."
Chick Corea
“Homework introduces a major rhythm voice on the rise.”
“Some use the word ‘painterly’ to describe piano players engaged in impressionistic flights of fancy. This description also suits the graceful determined phrasings of Richie Barshay.”
Ken Micallef - Downbeat
"Utterly fabulous and uplifting...this musegician drummer/percussionist is a master with the muse and a true gift to this land."
Nancy Nash - June Award nominee Canadian blues singer
“Playing a hybrid kit incorporating hand drums, percussion, and trap set, Barshay swings his butt off, simultaneously creating a Jazz/Indian world like Tony Williams setting fire to the Ganges.”
Modern Drummer
"Listening to Richie Barshay's deft drumming is always a treat."
Time Out New York
“On Homework, his striking debut as a leader, Herbie Hancock’s current drummer, Richie Barshay, effectively incorporated tabla into his drum kit while adding a wide spectrum of Indian and Afro-Cuban instruments to the fabric of his brilliantly original compositions. Tabla has a prominent role throughout.… And we’re not talking overdubbing here. Barshay actually plays the tabla at the kit while simultaneously activating the bass drum and hi-hat with his feet, then alternately picking up sticks to traverse his snare and toms in organic fashion.”
“a showcase of Zen-like cymbal work”"
Bill Milkowski - Traps: The Art of Drumming
"All the right stuff, so we have hope...continues to impress us all with his swing and musicality. "
Bob Brookmeyer
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
