Grass Machine by Clemens Grassmann

Drummer and composer Clemens Grassmann releases “Grass Machine,” a testament to the intersection of hard work and creativity that’s ushering in the rebirth of the New York Renaissance.

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. – When the waves of lockdowns hit New York City, drummer and composer Clemens Grassmann was faced with a choice: falter and become demoralized, or focus, work, and lay the foundation for his role in the soon-to-come Renaissance of the great city upon which so much of the world’s music is built. When the music industry looked like it
might crumble, Grassmann chose to hope, and to hope with an active determination to rebuild and make something greater. It was this hope – in himself, in music, and in New York itself – that led him to create Grass Machine, a tale of the strength of community and support amidst the unprecedented disunity wrought by the pandemic.

“‘We left the drums the way Billy Hart had set them up,’ they told me as I entered the drum booth,” recalls Grassmann. “I had never felt such a sensation, a magical mix of devotion, humility and excitement, that I would record my music at Rudy Van Gelder Studios, in the exact same room that gave birth to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden
Voyage, and Wayne Shorter’s Adam’s Apple.” Such was the energy in the room at the recording session for Grassmann’s Grass Machine, a continuation of the Blue Note tradition of recording and the first brick laid by Grassmann in the road to the 2020s New York Renaissance. Out of the chaos inflicted upon New York City and the rest of America by the
COVID-19 pandemic, the music community has – seemingly paradoxically – grown stronger and more tightly knit, with Grassmann and his band standing as no exception. Grassmann stands in hopeful and well-founded optimism for the future of music and of New York and it is this hardworking, determined hope that birthed Grass Machine. “New York City [is] a place loaded with electricity and energy, a network of brains and machines, intertwined cogwheels of working musicians,” Grassmann says. “As the city is reopening, the Renaissance has already begun.”

Clemens Grassmann, born in Berlin, Germany, is a musician, educator, drummer, percussionist, producer, composer and arranger who graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Spring 2016 with a Bachelor's Degree in Music Performance; 1 year after having received the Armand Zildjian Percussion Award in March 2015. Clemens is now residing in Brooklyn, New York.
www.clemensgrassmann.com