Born in Detroit on January 27, 1955, Pheeroan AkLaff grew up listening to recordings by such talents as Clifford Brown and Max Roach, Thelonious Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet. He studies speech and drama at Eastern Michigan University, then spent several months during 1975 interacting with and learning from drummers in the Ivory Coast. Eventually he settled in New York, where his technical facility and his finely tuned musical taste quickly won him numerous admirers - particularly among the city's more creative, adventuresome and forward looking jazz players.
Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, Pheeroan jas performed and recorded with many of today's leading musical light; Geri Allen, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Marty Ehrlich, Andrew Hill, Oliver Lake, David Murray, Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, Mal Waldron, Yosuke Yamashita and a host of others.
Audiences around the world have marveled firsthand at Pheeroan's exciting percussion work, thanks to a number of overseas tours - with his own ensembles and those of his peers.
As part of a Jay Hoggard group, Pheeroan performed in India, Syria, Jordan, Sudan and Morocco under U.S. Information Agency sponsorship in 1985.
Another USIA sponsored tour - this time with Oliver Lake's Jump Up band - took him to Togo, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Swaziland and Malawi in 1982.
Pheeroan backed the Marie Rose Guiraud Dance Company at performances in four Ivorian cities in 1981 - and was a member of the Henry Threadgill ensemble featured at India's jazz Yatra Festival in 1984.
He's been a frequent headliner with his own group and others at festivals, concerts and clubs throughout North America, as well as such major overseas events as the Sju Festival in the Netherlands, the Willisau Jazz festival in Switzerland, the Nurnberg East-West Festival and the Moers New jazz Festival in Germany, the Middlemeim Festival in Belgium and the Montsalvat Festival in Australia.
In mid-1996, Pheeroan presented portions of the Frederick Douglass Chronicles, a work-in-progress, at the Carver Cultural in San Antonio under the sponsorship of Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Foundation.
Over the years, he's played important musical roles in dramatic productions staged by the Manhattan Theater Company, the Yale Repertory Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival.
He Handles demanding percussion work during the premiere performance of Anthony Davis' widely acclaimed opera "The Life and Times of Malcolm X."
More recently, Pheeroan has performed on several occasions as a member of Summit Conference, an all-star aggregation that also include Reggie Workman, Sam Rivers, Julian Priester and Andrew Hill.
Sharing his musical skills and sensitivity with other player - and with young people - has long been important to Pheeroan. For example, he took part in History of Jazz courses offered by Brooklyn's Youth Development Council during the Eighties. He taught master classes at the New School's jazz program in 1991-92. He led percussion workshops in several Australian cities in 1996. And since 1993, he's been involved with students of drumming and Afro-American music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Pheeroan has been profiled by publications in the United States, Canada, Germany, Finland, India, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Japan and Australia. He's also been the subject of feature articles in Musician, Drums Japan and Modern Drummer
