Jojo Mayer learned to play the drums as an autodidact and had his first public performance at the age of 2 in Hong Kong, sitting in with his dad’s band.

After dropping out of school to study music, Jojo dropped out of music school at age 18 to go on the road with Monty Alexander, backing up jazz legends including Dizzy Gillespie, Ernestine Anderson and Nina Simone. That first exposure to an international audience was the beginning of his professional career as a musician.

Moving from Europe to NYC in 1989, he first worked as a sideman before dropping out of the freelance circuit to focus on his own projects.

Inspired by the emerging electronic music of the mid 90’s, he pioneered the reverse engineering of electronic drumbeat vocabulary on an acoustic drum kit.

The seminal work with his band NERVE re-contextualised electronic music into an improvisational live format and influenced a new generation of forthcoming musicians and bands.

With his current solo project, ME/MACHINE, Jojo develops and engages in real-time interaction with generative music technology, pushing towards new musical frontiers and syntax.

His work has brought Jojo to live audiences in 80 countries on five continents, and his videos have reached tens of millions of viewers on YouTube and other social media.

Jojo Mayer’s work continues to drop out of conformity and spearhead into new adventures.

Jojo is appearing in association with SONOR Drums and co-sponsors Sabian, Vic Firth and Evans. Jojo will perform on the new SONOR MOMENTUM Series for his main stage performance.