Ezra Lipp has decided to dedicate much of his life to the study, performance, and creation of music, in attempt that he may continuously and to an increasingly vivid degree, express through music his unique human experience, as well as the inner workings and truest offerings of his heart.
Ezra Lipp lives in California’s beautiful and bountiful Bay Area where he is carving out a career as a freelance drum artist, percussionist, teacher, and composer. Over the years he has had the opportunity to perform, record, and/or collaborate with many wonderful and inspiring bands and artists including Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, Sean Hayes, CAKE, Mohsen Namjoo, Heather Combs, Kacey Johansing, Mirah, Brett Dennen, Nathan Moore, Leslie Helpert, Geographer, HoneyComb, Surprise Me Mr. Davis, Moby, ALO, Paquito De Riveira (Irakere), Manicato, Arturo O’Farril, Ray Vega, StitchCraft, Sonya Cotton, Big Light, The Rhode Island Philharmonic, as well as members of Phish, John Brown’s Body, The Be Good Tanyas, The Slip, Rubblebucket, Tea Leaf Green, Albino, Aphrodesia, The Mother Hips and many others.
Born and raised in Dartmouth, Massachussetts/Providence, Rhode Island, Ezra began his musical journey at a young age when he discovered that his two hands, when slapped moderately on the body fat below his chest, produced a warm, hollow and positively percussive sound that he began experimenting with in order to provide accompanying rhythm for his favorite songs, both on the radio and in his head. Throughout the years, Ezra has developed and expanded his self dubbed brand of “tummy drumming”, which has lead him on a heartfelt and unending study of music and rhythms from around the planet. This has included jazz drumset (alongside many other styles), Afro-Cuban, Latin, and Brazilian percussion, North Indian classical music, West African drumming and xylophone, Western classical orchestral percussion, as well as piano, guitar, marimba, vibraphone, voice, and composition.
In the fall of 2004 he studied xylophone and regional drumming styles in Ghana with master drummers. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a concentration in music performance and jazz studies from the University of Vermont in 2005 after four years of an illuminating music education and experience playing in many ensembles of different kinds as well as several northern Vermont based bands. He began studying Tabla and North Indian music in 2006 privately in Vermont, shortly thereafter at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California, and most recently on a trip to India in the winter of 2009.
