American musician Milford Graves is considered one of the most pioneering free-jazz drummers of his times, liberating percussion from its role as the band’s timekeeping backbone. From his work with the New York Art Quarter in the ’60s to his work as a session musician with artists such as Pharoah Sanders, John Zorn, Paul Bley, Anthony Braxton, Kenny Clarke and myriad others, Graves’s body of work has been part of a radical American evolution, mutating jazz and other styles of improvisational music. Besides recording solo and collaborating with other artists, Graves was a professor at Bennington College in Vermont from the mid-’70s until the ’10s, and has devoted much of his efforts to research within the field of musical healing, including working with medical professionals to deliver patents for inventions that try to better understand cells and disease through exposure to sound.
