Biography
Jaimeo Brown functions as both drummer and bandleader, shaping an innovative aesthetic that fuses jazz, blues, hip-hop, African-American spirituals, and East Indian traditions. Raised by parents who worked as jazz musicians, he absorbed a broad range of music from childhood onward, encompassing everything from jazz to hip-hop. Only during his junior year of high school did he begin playing drums and pursuing formal study of the instrument. Rapid improvement soon led him to the jazz program at William Paterson University, where his senior thesis examined the Black church’s influence on jazz. While attending the school he also took up the tabla and started identifying connections between African-American spirituals and East Indian music. After receiving his degree in 2001, he secured engagements with an array of artists that included Bobby Hutcherson, Greg Tardy, Kenny Garrett, Wynton Marsalis, Q-Tip, and the Mingus Big Band. Brown entered postgraduate study at Rutgers University in 2007 and completed a master’s degree there. He subsequently traveled the Middle East as a jazz ambassador and maintained an active recording schedule, appearing on Geri Allen’s A Child Is Born (2011), Craig Brann’s Advent(ure) (2013), and Joe Locke’s Lay Down My Heart: Blues & Ballads, Vol. 1 (2013). Brown issued his first leader date, the expansive Transcendence, on Motéma Music in 2013. Three years later he released his second album, Work Songs, under the name Jaimeo Brown Transcendence; the project retained an ambitious scope within a leaner trio format anchored by guitarist and producer Chris Sholar.
Albums