Chad Wackerman

Chad Wackerman

Jazz Drums

Office: UMC-C304

A phenomenally skilled jazz and rock drummer, Chad’s professional career began in 1978 with the Bill Watrous Big Band. Since then he has amassed a remarkable body of work including a seven-year association with Frank Zappa, with whom he toured the USA and Europe and recorded 26 albums, including the London Symphony recordings.

Chad has also toured and recorded six albums with guitar legend Allan Holdsworth, played on the One Voice album and video with Barbra Steisand, and also recorded and toured with Steve Vai, Andy Summers, Men At Work, Ed Mann, Albert Lee, Colin Hay, Dweezil Zappa, Terry Bozzio, Carl Verheyen, David Garfield, and the Pasqua/Holdsworth/Haslip/Wackerman Band. Chad has also toured with James Taylor, John Patitucci, Joe Sample, Bannad From Utopia, and the World Drummers Ensemble (Bill Bruford, Luis Conte, Dou Dou Ndiaye Rose and Chad Wackerman).

As a bandleader and composer, Chad has five critically acclaimed CDs: Forty Reason, The View, Scream, Legs Eleven, and Dreams, Nightmares and Improvisations. Chad has written music for the Dennis Miller Show and has composed music for Allan Holdsworth’s Secrets, Wardenclyffe Tower, and Sixteen Men of Tain’. Wackerman’s trio has a performance DVD entitled Hits Live.

Chad’s drumming combines the power and conviction of rock with the sensitivity and finesse of jazz. His playing is remarkably free of predictable patterns and licks, relying instead on invention and interplay with the musicians around him.