Billy Hart

Yotam Silberstein, one of the leading jazz guitarists of his generation, has gained acclaim for a sound rich in bebop and blues as well as musical folklore from South America, North Africa and the Middle East, giving his music an increasingly global thrust. His mature compositional gift and gripping interpretive finesse are vividly represented on his 2022 release Universos and his 2020 outing with Argentine multi-instrumentalist and composer Carlos “Negro” Aguirre titled En el jardín. He is a member of the John Patitucci Trio (heard on the acclaimed album Irmãos de Fé), has toured extensively with legendary Brazilian singer-songwriter Ivan Lins, and played with characteristic fire and taste on Monty Alexander’s GRAMMY-nominated Harlem-Kingston Express Live! as well as David Sanborn & Marcus Miller’s Time and the River. He has worked in bands with some of the greatest figures in jazz including George Coleman, Charles McPherson, Jimmy Heath, James Moody and Roy Hargrove, and has toured with his own groups all over the world in the most prestigious festivals and venues including the Tokyo, Umbria and North Sea Jazz Festivals as well as Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center and more. William “Billy” Hart (born November 29, 1940 in Washington, D.C.) is a jazz drummer and educator who has performed with some of the most important jazz musicians in history. Early on Hart performed in Washington, D.C. with soul artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, and then later with Buck Hill and Shirley Horn, and was a sideman with the Montgomery Brothers (1961), Jimmy Smith (1964–1966), and Wes Montgomery (1966–1968). Hart moved to New York in 1968, where he recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Zawinul, and played with Eddie Harris, Pharoah Sanders, and Marian McPartland. Hart was a member of Herbie Hancock’s sextet (1969–1973), and played with McCoy Tyner (1973–1974), Stan Getz (1974–1977), and Quest (1980s), in addition to extensive freelance playing (including recording with Miles Davis on 1972’s On the Corner). Billy Hart works steadily and teaches widely. Since the early 1990s Hart spends considerable time at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and is adjunct faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music and Western Michigan University. He also conducts private lessons through The New School and New York University. Hart often contributes to the Stokes Forest Music Camp and the Dworp Summer Jazz Clinic in Belgium.