* En anglais uniquement
Scottish percussionist, improviser, and musician of eclectic tastes
Ken Hyder began his career of blending jazz with a variety of world and folk musics in the late '60s when he formed his first band, the jazz and Celtic group Talisker. Among Hyder's projects are his long-standing collaboration (over two decades) with avant-garde pianist
Maggie Nicols, called Hoots and Roots, and an equally long musical relationship with revered improviser
Tim Hodgkinson.
Hyder grew up in Southeast Scotland's Dundee, not far from Dudhope Castle, in a family, like much of Dundee, whose financial situation was in stark contrast to that of the castle's inhabitants. Yet his family was quite musical, and Hyder began playing along with his pianist grandmother when he was a boy. He went on to study Celtic music in Scotland and Ireland and, in the late '60s, formed the Celtic and jazz band Talisker, which recorded several albums and toured Europe. Hyder ended up living in London, where he was exposed to a wider variety of music and began collaborating with area musicians including
Soft Machine's
Elton Dean and the vocalist he would continue to work with for many years to come,
Maggie Nicols.
In the decades since,
Ken Hyder has traveled all over the world, to learn and perform, resulting in a travel log that includes studying throat singing and shamanic drumming in Tuva (on trips to Siberia with
Tim Hodgkinson), performing with Japanese and Tibetan Buddhist monks, Russian diva
Valentina Ponomareva (Hyder toured Russia several times during the 1990s), folk musicians such as
Dave Brooks (a Scottish piper), uilleann piper
Tomas Lynch, and singer/songwriter
Frankie Armstrong. Among the avant-garde musicians Hyder has collaborated with are Hodgkinson, Nicols (their project is called the Hoots and Roots Duo), vocalist
Phil Minton, and U.S. trumpeter
Jim Dvorak (with whom he has the group Bardo State Orchestra, a trio including Brazilian bassist and cellist
Marcio Mattos). He also has a regular duo with pianist
Vladimir Miller called 2R1. Hyder has taken his polyrhythmic playing all over the world in a variety of creative collaborations and settings. ~ Joslyn Layne