Biography
Education and influences
After completing his education in aerospace engineering at Iowa State University, Hall received his Bachelor of Music degree from William Paterson College in Wayne, New Jersey and his master's degree in Composition and Arranging from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. He is presently a distinguished Special Trustees Fellow pursuing his Doctorate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago.
As a jazz drummer, Hall is primarily influenced by the work of Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, ‘Philly’ Joe Jones, Max Roach, and Roy Haynes, with whom he shares a birth date. He is also directly influenced by the work of Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, Ralph Peterson, Jr., and Kenny Washington, among many others.
As an ethnomusicologist, Hall is principally interested in issues of ethnicity, identity, and temporality; popular musics of the world; music as protest and resistance; and musics of both the African continent and the African Diaspora. His dissertation is a historical ethnography of Philly Soul during the Black Power Movement.
Career
The list of artists that Hall has performed, toured, and/or recorded with reflects the diverse, varied approaches of his music-making in the fields of jazz and popular music and include Branford Marsalis, Ray Charles, Roy Hargrove, Joshua Redman, Pedro Latães Horace Silver, Michael Brecker, Nicolas Payton, Kurt Elling, Benny Green, Frank Wess, Ken Peplowski, Wycliffe Gordon, Russell Malone, Frank Foster, George Coleman, Lin Halliday, Betty Carter, Jimmy Heath, Benny Golson, Bobby Latães, Wallace Roney, Diana Krall, Harold Mabern, Renee Rosnes, Clark Terry, the Mingus Big Band, Steve Lacy, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jim Snidero, Eric Alexander, James Spaulding, Buster Williams, Gary Bartz, Dick Oatts, Melvin Rhyne, Ira Sullivan, David Murray, Bobby Broom, Lester Bowie, Slide Hampton, Charles Davis, James Moody, David Hazeltine, Henry Butler, Shirley Scott, Sonny Fortune, Joe Williams, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Billy Harper, Brian Lynch, Rick Margitza, Tim Hagans, John Swana, Ralph Bowen, Orrin Evans, Bud Shank, Phil Woods, Von Freeman, Ron Bridgewater, Kenny Barron, Maria Schneider, Jackie McLean, Mulgrew Miller, Marcus Belgrave, Hamiet Bluiett, the Woody Herman Orchestra, Patricia Barber, Joe Henderson, Curtis Fuller, Charles McPherson, Oliver Lake, and Steve Wilson, among others.
Additionally, Hall is both a member of the Terell Stafford Quintet and the Music Director of the Chicago Jazz Ensemble. He is also a former regular member of the prestigious Grammy-nominated Carnegie Hall Jazz Band under the musical and artistic direction of trumpeter, and Dizzy Gillespie protégé, Jon Faddis, and has served as an extra in the percussion sections of the Des Moines and the Cedar Rapids Symphonies.
In 2012, Hall joined the faculty of the DePaul University School of Music where he is the Director of Jazz Studies. He has served as a faculty member at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Chicago and at Columbia College Chicago, and is a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Band Director's Academy and Essentially Ellington faculties. Hall also taught in the Ravinia Festival's Jazz in the Schools Mentoring Program, the Merit School of Music in Chicago, and is currently an educator and mentor in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz's Jazz in America Program and the Jazz Institute of Chicago's Artists Residency Program.
The Avedis Zildjian Company, simply known as Zildjian, is a musical instrument manufacturer specializing in cymbals and other percussion instruments. Founded by the ethnic Armenian Zildjian family in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire, the company relocated to the United States in the 20th century. Today, it is the largest cymbal and drumstick maker in the world.
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