Ken Kobayashi is Jazz based drummer, living and active in New York. He has been playing among the various venues such as Kavehaz, Cleopatra’s Needle, Smalls, Smoke, Garage Restaurant, Jazz at Kitano, MOMA PS1, Cafe Bohemia and many more. He has been playing outstanding musicians including Ravi Coltrane, Anthony Coleman, Zoh Amba, Ivo Perelman, Elliott Levin, Dan Nimmer (Wynton Marsalis Quartet), Tomas Morgan (Bill Frisell Band)and many others. DownBeat 4star rated, album “Boundary” released via ESP-Disk in 2018. It features 10 improvisations by the trio with Megumi Yonezawa(P) and Masa Kamaguchi(B). This album has been distributing all over the world, freedom, creative, poetic performance in this album received highly acclaims from many critics worldwide. Especially in Japan, the King International, the most prestigious company in Japanese jazz market, is distributing this album. Support by them, Japan tour that took place in 2018 was a great success.
He grew up and lived in Tokyo. Awarded the Bachelor of Art Science from University. While at the same time, he started pursuing his music career as a drummer. Acquiring a strong knowledge in contemporary Art & Music, he has aimed to found his own unique style by interesting artistic idea.
After cementing his relationships with the various youth artists and players in Tokyo, he moved to New York in 1998 and gained more complex drumming techniques of Jazz and world music at the Drummer’s Collective, New York. Since then, he pursues his own music and play with various musicians and at variety venue in NYC.
To further develop his music and sound, he has recently challenged to review his music through the various collaborations. He also exploits his creative style with contemporary Jazz, Free Jazz, Latin music, Eastern European music, Arabic music and Electronics sounds for developing his original works.