Name: Gregory Hutchinson
Nationality: American
Occupation: Drummer, composer, improviser
Current release: Gregory Hutchinson's new album Kind of Now – The Pulse of Miles is slated for release April 3rd 2026 via Warner. Alongside himself on drums, the album features Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Ron Blake (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Jakob Bro (guitar), Gerald Clayton (piano), Emmanuel Michael (guitar), and Joe Sanders (double bass).

[Read our Jakob Bro interview] 



Miles' influence on music can hardly be overstated. But we all have different stories about how we discovered his work and how it affected us. What is yours?

Miles's influence on me was twofold. Not only his trumpet playing …

This album is called The Pulse of Miles. So, it was the drummers that I was listening to and how they played with Miles and Miles's sense of rhythm and his sense of exploring music in a way that I hadn't heard up until then.

I was listening to a lot of bebop. And so, when I heard Miles, I felt like it spoke to me in terms of what I was trying to do. And then I went back, of course, and I had to do my homework. I started listening to the earlier period of Miles, from bebop on. And Kind of Blue also, of course.

The rhythmical approach, the harmonic approach and just the way that he seemed to always have the right musicians to play with. That's kind of what made me go as a listener and as a creative person, that's something incredible when you have both of those traits in the same person.

Why is Miles still so relevant today, do you feel?

Because we're still trying to catch up. All the stuff that that group played back in the late ‘50s and ‘60s we're still trying to emulate now. Jazz musicians are still trying to understand how to play free, how to play with his kind of voice, how to play with his kind of fire. That's why those records are timeless.

When you have a rhythm section of Herbie, Ron and Tony, you can't beat that. And then on top of it, you have Wayne Shorter.

The press release opens with a Miles quote: “Time isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing.” What does that mean for you personally?

Well, time for me, being a drummer, is essential, of course. Time is the flow; time is how things evolve. Time is space, time is silence. So, all those things are important for me as playing the instrument.

I try and think about that while I'm playing and I've been fortunate to play with some great, great bass players: Christian McBride, Ray Brown to name a few. And Rodney Whitaker, another one.

Also, I think that playing time is something that a lot of people nowadays don't really focus on. Everyone focuses on this technical aspect, but no one focuses on making it feel good, making it something that people can dance to.

So, time to me equals dance. Can we play time? Can I make you dance?

You mentioned that one goal for Kind of Now was “continuing the conversation Miles started.” What, exactly, is that conversation about?

The conversation that not just Miles but all the great jazz musicians started, was the conversation of not knowing – or trying to understand - where you're going. The conversation of what relevant things are going on in your life.

It's not even so much about continuing Miles's conversation. It's more about continuing my own growth. It may take place through the vehicle of his music. But still, it's something that I have to do.

All the musicians on the record, Emmanuel Michael, Jakob Bro, Joe Sanders, Gerlad Clayton, Ambrose, Ron Blake - we all are trying to continue that conversation, which is our own conversation.

Seeing Miles through the lens of rhythm, as you hinted at in the press release, is fascinating to me, because I also think it's an underappreciated aspect of his music. Tell me about the most important transitions and phases from your perspective.

Wow, that's hard because they're all important. I mean, you go from kind of Miles being an understudy of Dizzy’s and being around Dizzy to growing up with all these great trumpet players at that time: Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham, all these great trumpet players were around, and Lee Morgan.

That right there is a phase that you're going through, trying to understand where your place is and where you fit in. And then, on top of that, you also want to do some different music. So you can only imagine what the other guys were thinking when some of the stuff that he was doing was released.

But we all go through that. That transition period of learning how to play and then feeling comfortable with what you're playing and then feeling uncomfortable wanting to reach for something else. It's all a process.

Which of Miles's drummers had the strongest impact on your own playing?

That is another hard question.

Of course, I'm a Philly Joe fan. Philly Joe has meant a lot to me in terms of getting my sound and my hands together. But then you have Tony who had that freedom, you know? And that's where I got a lot of my freedom from a lot of my searching comes from Tony. A lot of my pinpoint accuracy comes from Philly Joe. And then a lot of my other intensity come from Jimmy Cobb.

So, I would say Cobb, Tony and Philly. Like, not in any specific order, but those are the guys who really had the most effect on me. Philly’s ride cymbal before I heard Tony was exactly the way I wanted to play, and I still do. I'm still trying to find that. But then Tony's ride cymbal opened things up for me.

It's hard to pick one.

It would seem that as rhythm becomes more hypnotic and a foreground element in its own right, the need for the melodic instruments to play many notes becomes less urgent. How do you see this interaction between rhythm and melody for your different bands and projects?

Well, it's quite simple. I mean, rhythm is one thing, and melody is another thing. They start interacting with each other, I think, when both collide in a way that you can still understand both.

A lot of musicians are writing melodies now that we can't hum and we can't dance to. It's just too much. It’s the same thing for guys playing rhythm, though. A lot of them are playing so much rhythm that you get lost.

The beauty is when you come to a place that they both meet in the simplest form at the beginning. And they kind of go from there. If you have a killing melody, that allows the drummer to play some rhythms around that. You can't have a dull melody, you have to have something that, kind of, invites us as a rhythm section player to play on.

I've long been intrigued by bands or ensembles where the drummer is the leader and/or main composer. In as far as it is possible to generalise, what do you think changes in terms of the music or performance in these situations – what would you say changed in relation to Miles' music?

Blakey was a great bandleader. Papa Joe was a great band leader. Jack De Johnette was a great band leader. I think that since the drums are such a powerful instrument, most people are so used to seeing them in the background.

But the thing about drummers is that we are most some of the funniest people and we have some of the most amazing charisma. We have a way of talking, not only on the drums, but to people. So, I think that that's huge.

Now, what would I say changed in relation to Miles’ music? Nothing changed. I mean, I approached the music not from a band leader standpoint, but just from someone who wanted to do an album that paid homage to the great Miles, but also allowing input from everyone. As a great band leader, you have to allow the input to come from everyone and not just do what you want to do.

So, I think that's the beautiful thing about great drummers who lead bands - they allow the band to be open. They don't rule with an iron fist. That's how the music gets played and sounds better.

How did you go about picking the pieces for Kind of Now? The choices are really interesting.

I wanted to cover a lot of different eras of Miles, a lot of different music. I didn't want to just stay in the bebop period or the post bop phase. I wanted to do all of it … eclectic.

I just picked tunes that aren't played a lot necessarily. I tried to stay away from the ones that everybody knows, but of course, I had to do “Seven Steps to Heaven” - but we, also throw in “Ah-Leu-Cha,” Feio,” different things, “Black comedy.” So, that is a mixture.

People will have heard some of these lesser known tunes, but they've never attempted to play them. So here we said, “Okay, you know what, let's just give it a try and see what we come up with.” And I'm very happy with the way that it came out. We did have a few other pieces as well but once we got in the studio, the direction I was trying to go in became clearer to me.

So, that's how we ended up with the pieces that we have now, and I hope you enjoy it.

Since you also performed “Bitches Brew” for this album, I wanted to get some of your thoughts on the Electric Miles era. I find this phase fascinating because it seems to demarcate a transition between “electric” music and “electronic” music. Somewhere in the borderzone between the two, there is an intriguing territory – how do you see that yourself?

I love the electric Miles era. Actually, I think every period of Miles is incredible. Just the freedom. If you listen to how they played on those albums, It's completely open, completely up in the air. It completely feels like they went in the room and just started playing some grooves. And Miles just started playing whatever he felt.

There's something about that that's kind of awesome. It gets us away from everything that we knew for Miles from, you know, playing all those tunes, the way with the quintet, the way he played and even before that. It kind of opens it up to where he was trying to go later on.

I think as jazz musicians or as musicians in general, we have to be open to all phases, all genres of music, and all ways that we can play and grow and let our true feelings be heard. Sometimes I think we get stuck in this, “I only do this” or “I only do that period.” You play music. You're a musician.

I'm not a jazz musician. I am a musician. So I could relate to all of the things that Miles is trying to do because I'm trying to do the same thing.

What do you particularly remember about the recording sessions for Kind of Now?

I remember that we rehearsed the day before, of course. And I remember saying to the guys the next day that we came in, “I don't want to hear anything that we rehearsed! We're just going to go for it. One or two takes max, and we’ll just feel our way through it like a real session.” I think that that was the spirit of Miles.

So we have tunes like “Feio,” that's kind of like a jam and there's no direction per se, but there is a direction. So that's kind of the energy that I wanted. I wanted people to understand, “You're free to do what you hear, and you know where we're trying to go. So anything that's going to help us get to that point for this particular song, by all means, do it.”

It helps when you play with musicians who you've played with before. So I know every person that I've played with. Me and Ron Blake spent years playing with Roy Hargrove, so we've made some classic records there. Me and Gerald Clayton, we've been playing together a long time. Ambrose, the same thing. Joe Sanders the same thing.

The newcomers were Emmanuel Michael and Jakob Bro. And that was simple. I met Emmanuel when he was playing with an ensemble at Manhattan School of Music, and I happened to be subbing for Kendrick Scott, and I heard him playing, and I knew right away that that was a sound that I wanted. And Jakob Bro, same for Bill Frisell when I was playing with Ambrose in a trio. It's hard to sub for Bill Frisell but Jakob came right in and he sounded amazing.

So, I think that capturing the spirit wasn't hard at all because we're all great players and we all understand. When you start a tune, that's the beginning of that tune that day, at that moment. It's a moment that'll never be recreated again. So, you give it your best.

Yeah, it would have helped to play all this music for months but maybe it wouldn’t sound as fresh as it does. There’s something to be said about hitting it the first time and letting it go, and not playing it over and over.

Many recording engineers have remarked that the drums can be particularly hard to capture. What makes drums sound great on record and how did you approach this for Kind of Now?

First of all, you have to have the right engineer to record the drums. That's the first thing. Second thing, you have to understand what the sound is that you're going for. You have to know how to tune drums. There's a difference between live and in the studio. You have to understand that.

I like to capture the room sound of the drums and the natural sound of the drums. We’ll put up all the mics, but I choose to use very few mics because I want the sound to not overtake the band. I want the sound to be just right.

I think James Farber is a great engineer. He's done many records that I've played on, many successful records. That's what makes it easy and he made it easy.

As of Tutu, human drummers were either replaced by drum machines or used heavily in the mix. What's your personal perspective on how that changed the music?

There's nothing wrong with a drum machine.

I'm an electronic person. I deal with all those things, MPC, you name it. Ableton, Logic, all of all of those things. You have to understand there's a place and time for everything. They will never be able to take over what I do in the genre of jazz and popular music. They can do that, but when you go to see someone perform live, they might have some drum machines that reinforce some things just for a sound, but still, you want to see a live person playing.

For me, drum machines will never be able to take over, but they do have a place and they do have a sound that you can use if you know how to. Don't be scared of the drum machine. You program the drum machines, so it's only gonna be as good as you are.

One of the things that Miles demonstrated in his lifetime is that instrumental music can be political. How much of that power is still alive today, would you say?

Music is always political.

Those guys, they had something to fight for back then. Civil rights was a huge thing. When you listen to “A Love Supreme,” and all that stuff, a lot of that's talking about the pain that we were feeling is Afro-American people growing up in the USA. I think that same pain is back again. So, music is not just notes and tones, music is expression of the mind of what's going on in your life in terms of politics also.

But I think the most important thing when I, when you listen to this album that I want you to take away is that the music never dies. The spirit never dies. And there are people who still want to play music that reaches you and touches you, and that's what we're trying to do on this record.