AT certain points in his long and varied career, Bill Bruford has been called a rock drummer. At others, he has been called a jazz drummer. He isn’t happy about either description. “If there were a government edict that came down tomorrow that said that the words ‘rock’ and ‘jazz’ will never be permissible again, I’d be thrilled,” Bruford said. “That would give drummers like me a freer hand.”
Not that there are many drummers like him. Over the course of a 50-plus-year career, Bill Bruford has played with innovative rock bands like Yes and King Crimson, led his own experimental jazz groups—including one that operated under his own surname and another named Earthworks—and collaborated on a dizzying array of projects with players from Ralph Towner to Allan Holdsworth to Dutch pianist Michiel Borstlap. He even cut an inventive album with the Piano Circus that featured no fewer than six players on that instrument. Over the years, Bruford has created music that’s dense, raucous, and electric, as well as spare, hushed, and acoustic. Through all of it, he’s been celebrated for both his taste and his power. To illustrate the former: King Crimson’s Robert Fripp was so impressed by the drummer’s considered decision to add nothing to the band’s 1974 track “Trio” that he gave Bruford a co-writing credit. “I did contribute something,” Bruford asserted. “Silence.”
Nearly five decades later, the full arc of his career has finally found a home. Bruford recently released a six-CD box set titled that organizes his quixotic catalog in an inventive way. He anointed
