Ken Hyder

Who is Ken Hyder?

Ken Hyder is a Scottish jazz fusion drummer and percussionist born in Dundee, Scotland, perhaps best known for combining folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz. He has worked with and recorded with many musicians, including Elton Dean, Chris Biscoe, Tim Hodgkinson, Paul Rogers, Maggie Nicols, Don Paterson and Frankie Armstrong.

He also worked with Dick Gaughan, Vladimir Rezitsky, Phil Minton, the Scottish Lindsay Cooper, Sainkho Namtchylak, Jo'burg Hawk, Marcio Mattos, Jim Dvorak, John Edwards, Davie Webster, John Rangecroft, Radik Tyulyush, Julian Bahula, Lucky Ranku, Valentina Ponomareva, Larry Stabbins, Harry Beckett, Art Themen, Gary Windo, Pete McPhail, Keith Tippett, Harry Miller, Nick Evans, Raymond Macdonald, Ntshuks Bonga, Hamish Henderson, Jon Dobie, and Lello Colombo.

Hyder has been playing and composing music for over 40 years. In that time he’s produced over three dozen dozen albums of highly original material. He began playing jazz in Scotland before moving south to London where he played at the legendary Little Theatre Club - an avant garde haunt run by the late John Stevens.

He formed Talisker and went on to make six albums with this pioneering and proto-type Celtic jazz group. In the 1970s he began moving away from jazz and into collaborations with musicians from different musical backgrounds including Irish, South African and South American players. Later, he became interested in exploring spiritual aspects of music with spiritual practitioners like Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist monks, and Siberian shamans.