Carola Gray

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Carola Gray , actually Carola Gschrey , (* 5. August 1968 in Zorneding ) is a jazz - and fusion - drummer and composer .

Live and act

Carola Gschrey was born in Zorneding near Munich and attended the Humboldt-Gymnasium Vaterstetten in Baldham from 1978 to 1987 . First she learned to play the piano and wanted to become a concert pianist. Then at the age of eleven she started playing the drums. In the mid-1980s she played as a drummer in a beer tent band. She got into jazz through a school band and played at the Unterfahrt jazz club for the first time at the age of 17 .

After graduating from high school, she studied with Joachim Ullrich at the Cologne University of Music . She went to New York, where Billy Hart became her mentor and she lived for six years - among other things she played in the gothic band Maria Excommunikata and recorded her first albums. In 1996 she returned to Munich; Her third album Girls Can't Hit was created in Germany with sewing to ambient and drum & bass . In 1999 she worked in India with the musician TV Gopalakrishnan (among others with George Harrison ) in the " Karnatik Jazz Project".

Carola Gray published several CDs under her own name, for which she also composed the music. Some of them made it into the top ten of the American jazz charts. For this she received prizes such as the Bavarian Culture Prize or the Burghausen Jazz Prize . She played with Craig Handy , Lonnie Plaxico , Mike Stern , Ron McClure , Fiona Burnett and Ravi Coltrane, among others . She also gave duo concerts with well-known bassists such as Rocco Prestia , Jeff Berlin or Stuart Hamm and also solo shows.

Gray gained the reputation of being Germany's most famous modern drummer. She appears with her two bands, the jazz rock band "Noisy Mama" and the rock / pop band "Babelfish" through Europe. She is also part of Thomas Fink's trio . From fall 2013 to early 2014, Gray toured with “Noisy Mama” and well-known local musicians in India. After her return, Brigitte Theile dedicated an episode of the Bayern 3 radio series Mensch Theile! .

Gray has her main residence in Vaterstetten . She gives drum clinics worldwide, is the author of several drum books and guest lecturer at the Institut Musik Daya Indonesia (IMDI) in Jakarta . She has had her own recording studio since 2004 and founded her label Noisy Mama Productions in 2007 .

Discography (selection)

Drum schools

  • Drum workshop. The Gray Way (Voggenreiter Verlag)
  • Drum Action Classic Rock Grooves (PPV Medien)

literature

  • Christine Metzger New York , Koenemann-Verlag
  • Martin Kunzler : Jazz Lexicon. Volume 1: A – L (= rororo-Sachbuch. Vol. 16512). 2nd Edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-499-16512-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From someone who went out to learn to drum , Welt am Sonntag, August 9, 2009.
  2. ↑ Portrait of the drummer and composer Carola Gray , From Schwaben & Altbayern , July 2008.
  3. ↑ Portrait (Sonor)
  4. ↑ This Mama made some noise! , The Hindu , November 11, 2013.
  5. ↑ Carola Gray presents: "The Meeting of the Continents" 2 bands - 2 continents - 1 one-time concert ( Memento from March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Gasteig , 2014.
  6. ↑ Carola Gray at Mensch Theile (podcast), Bayern 3, April 17, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Gray, Carola
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gschrey, Carola (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German jazz drummer
DATE OF BIRTH 5th August 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Anger thing