Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Bishop was born in Seattle, Washington on April 5, 1956 and raised in Germany, Washington, DC, San Antonio, Texas and Eugene, Oregon. He started playing drums at 9 in Washington, DC with the Patriots drum corps and performed regularly throughout high school and college in Oregon, studying with Mel Brown and Charles Dowd. Attending the University of Oregon, he later transferred to the jazz program at North Texas State University.

Moving to Seattle in 1981 he had an extended engagement with the band Glider and never left. An unusually creative and fertile scene at the time, the city offered performances with top touring artists and the opportunity to create long and substantial musical relationships with inspired Northwest musicians. 1983, saw Bishop helping to form the fusion group Blue Sky, which released two national Top 10 albums and toured throughout the west coast and Canada over the next 9 years.

He was a twenty-year member of the piano trio New Stories with pianist Marc Seales and bassist Doug Miller, releasing 4 CDs of their own, 6 with the late be-bop saxophonist Don Lanphere, and Song for the Geese with Mark Murphy. They were a house trio for 17 years at Bud Shank’s Pt. Townsend Jazz Festival, headlined the 1993 JVC Jazz Festival in Vladivostok, Russia, appeared in concert with Tom Harrell, Julian Priester, Charles McPherson, Vincent Herring, Nick Brignola, Conte Condoli, Bobby Shew and Larry Coryell.

They regularly appeared around the country by themselves or touring with Mark Murphy, Ernie Watts or Don Lanphere. He has performed in concerts and clubs with Lee Konitz, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, George Cables, Kenny Werner, Bobby Hutcherson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sonny Fortune, Herb Ellis, Buddy DeFranco, Bobby McFerrin, Joe Locke, Jerry Bergonzi, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Larry Coryell, and countless others.

John has taught drums privately for forty years, was on the faculty at the University of Washington from 2005-2009, regularly holds drum and jazz workshops throughout the country with the Hal Galper Trio, and co-founded The Reality Book, a web-based, HD Video Play-Along education system for jazz musicians of all levels.

Drummer, educator, record label owner, graphic designer, and festival presenter John Bishop continues to perform, record, tour and educate. has been one of the primary voices in Northwest Jazz for over 35 years. He’s appeared on more than 100 albums, was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019.

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