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Abbey Rader (October 14, 1943 – September 2025) was an American avant-garde jazz drummer. Throughout his childhood and early career, he worked in New York City where loft jazz, bebop, and free jazz influenced him. He played and taught across Europe in the 1970s and 1980s and then returned to North America to create music that combines free jazz, martial arts, and Buddhism. He has recorded over twenty-five albums as a leader and has worked with Dave Liebman, John Handy, Billy Bang, Dr. L. Subramaniam, and Mal Waldron in a career spanning over four decades.
Rader's album First Gathering was named one of the Best of 2015. It's the first album from his West Coast Quartet with Peter Kuhn, Kyle Motl and Drew Ceccato. His album, Reunion, was released on July 23, 2016 and is a recording of his live October 31, 2012 performance at PAX: Performing Arts Exchange in Miami, Florida. This was an improvised performance including Kidd Jordan, John McMinn, Kyle Motl, and Noah Brandmark.
The Message, was released in August 2014 and is a recording of his live January 2014 radio performance on Evenin' Jazz with the Real Tracy Fields at WLRN Miami. The Message was named one of the Best of 2014 by Avant Music News.
Before this, his quartet featuring John McMinn, Noah Brandmark and Kyle Motl released their second recording, Reach for the Skies a runner-up for Album of Year in 2013. Their first album, Live at PAX, was named one of the Best of 2012.
His education went beyond music into spirituality. Rader met drummer Clarence "Scoby" Strohman while playing opposite the Marin Rivers trio. Strohman introduced Rader to books like Light on the Path by Mabel Collins and Paramahansa Yogananda's The Autobiography of a Yogi, which helped begin Rader's spiritual journey. Rader recalled an anecdote that touched his confidence as well. "My music reading skills were not very good, but Scoby had lots of faith in me. He stood behind me on the bandstand one night as I started to play acts with lots of music to read. Scoby said, "That's not a problem for you. That's nothing for you." I played remarkably well that night. I said to Scoby, "Did you see those difficult charts I read?", and he said he couldn't read a note. So I learned something else about the spiritual power and the power of the mind."
Rader recalled that hearing John Coltrane's quartet with Elvin Jones at the Half Note Club was a moment that changed his musical expression to improvisation and searching for the union between mind, spirit, and body.
From France, he moved to Germany, initially playing with Bob Lenox in Lenox's rock and funk pieces. His desire to continue playing free jazz brought Rader to drumming with George Bishop in improvised duet performances. In the 1980s, he worked with alto saxophonist, John Handy; violinist, L. Subramaniam; and bassist, Sigi Busch. Handy encouraged Rader to play powerfully, asking him to play drum solos behind his saxophone as they toured Europe. Later, Rader spent five years in the Gunter Hampel Big Band that included Jeanne Lee and Marion Brown. Rader's next lesson came from playing with Mal Waldron and Marc Levin, a NYC friend, on trumpet. As Rader described, Mal often helped Rader put life's tribulations in perspective and encouraged him to play freely, to transform the energy he might be feeling by channeling it into his drumming.
During this time, Rader started his Abbey Rader's Right Time band. He recorded several times with this band and established record label Abray Productions. He also became a touring clinician for Sonor and Tosco (later Sabian, see: UFIP) cymbals, and taught at multiple universities in Germany. During his teaching, he frequently featured improvisational artists he worked with to teach how to improvise on music tracks a band may play.
Rader later performed with John McMinn, Noah Brandmark, Kyle Motl and Kidd Jordan.
These experiences, and his later performances, continued to influence Abbey Rader's style of music. He drew on his traditional jazz roots to create a "circular feeling...with a lot of polyrythmn between cymbals, bass drum, and snare drum", which he employed to play with other musicians to free himself from the original way of drumming and ultimately himself.
Rader recorded and performed with Laurindo Almeida, Billy Bang, George Bishop, Marion Brown, Cameron Brown, Sigi Busch, Marty Cook, Roy Cumming, Herman Foster, Joe Gallivan, Philip Gelb, Rainer Glas, Mack Goldsbury, Gunter Hampel, John Handy, Luc Houtkamp, Leonard Jones, Kidd Jordan, Peter Kuhn, Jeanne Lee, Bob Lenox, Marc Levin, David Liebman, Frank Lowe, Keshavan Maslak, Ron McClure, Kim Mikkelson, Peck Morrison, Peter Ponzol, Ed Schuller, Ken Simon, Dr. L. Subramaniam, Mal Waldron, David Wertman, Joerg Widmoser, Leszek Zadlo and Joe Zeytoonian.
Rader incorporated these practices in his style of improvised music. As explained by Rader, in an Avant Music News interview, "in music, if you have the technique well built...and want to improvise freely, you must empty your mind to...interplay spontaneously with the other musicians and allow the music to come through you. This to me is the correlation between the freer music and the Buddhist empty mind practice."
In the early 2000s, Rader started practicing Qigong and Taiji under the tutelage of Wei Zhong Foo and Dororthy Chong. He then continued his studies at the International Buddhist Progress Society Temple under Robert Cheng. Rader later took over teaching at this Temple after Cheng departed.
Rader's next teacher was Chen Ji Fan and after years under his instruction and at his encouragement, Rader began teaching Yang-style tai chi, standing ( zhan zhuang) meditation, and sitting meditation, starting his Fearless Mind School. Rader stated that he was inspired by these practices to enter a state of "empty mind", which allowed him to embrace spontaneity in life and music.
He taught at Hochschule für Musik Detmold, Musikschule Einbeck, PH Göttingen, and TU Braunschweig.
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