Hearn Gadbois

Hearn Gadbois' musical career spans more than four decades. From playing congas in Funk and Blues bands in his hometown of Minneapolis in the seventies, he relocated to New York in the early eighties and was quickly absorbed into the very unpredictable 'downtown' scene: he played CBGb's, Mudd Club, Symphony Space, The Kitchen and a host of other venues with an incredibly varied assortment of artists. Collaborating with choreographer Bebe Miller, Patti Smith, Meredith Monk, Suzanne Vega, Yoko Ono- these are but a few of the better-known. He was a founding member of Saqqara Dogs, and Annabouboula, and he made frequent concerts and film-scoring sessions with composers Robert Een and Carter Burwell.
In addition to playing, Hearn designs and builds many of his own instruments, which he uses in much of his own work, developing a sort of drumset from a combination of his versions of traditional Middle Eastern percussion and instruments that are to be played with the feet. A hand-drummer, he has conducted much of his own rather idiosyncratic field research into world hand-drumming traditions in Brasil, Uzbekistan, Iran, Morocco, and Turkey and has synthesized a style of playing that can be safely said to belong to no particular place.
He has recorded two solo CDs, Joinery, and One Thousand and One Fingers, and is at work on a third.
He left New York not long after the 911 attacks and lives and works with his wife, dancer/choreographer Rena Milgrom in Prague, Czech Republic.