Baltimore native Eric Kennedy is a drummer, vocalist, percussionist, educator, and composer. Before the age of five, Kennedy began his development as a percussionist and singer performing with a family and neighborhood band and his church choir. After high school, he moved to Philadelphia where he worked with the world music ensemble Our Time Is Now. In Philadelphia, he also came under the tutelage of Sun Ra and studied with the legendary drummer Edgar Bateman. After his return to Baltimore, Kennedy played with Mack Rucks, Moments Notice, the Eubie Blake Sextet and Big Band, Craig Alston, Ruby Glover, Gary Richardson, the Al Maniscalco Quartet, the Steve Carrington Quartet, and the Kelly Shepherd Quartet. In addition to composing, he leads his own ensembles and also performs with the Bobby Watson Quartet, NoMad Stories, the Timmy Shepherd Group, Inside Out (a collective trio with Lafayette Gilchrist and Michael Formanek), the Larry Willis Trio, the Jeff Reed Trio, the Todd Marcus Quartet, the Joel Holmes Trio, and Kinetic Sounds. He was an artist-in-residence at An Die Musik (2011-2012) and a member of the first American jazz ensemble to perform at the Tianjin Jazz Festival in Tianjin, China. Recently, he recorded on the Mobtown Moon tribute to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and the I Have a Dream Band’s Check Cashing Day in honor of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, D.C. Kennedy has taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Eubie Blake Cultural Center, and the Malmö Academy of Music in Sweden. Dedicated to developing young artists, Kennedy conducts private lessons in drums, percussion, music theory, vocals, and primal performance technique.
