Christopher A. Garcia was born, raised, and still resides in East LA (Never to be confused with West LA). His background includes performances in a wide variety of musical settings including; Jazz, Rock, World Music, traditional Mexican music, pre-Hispanic music, percussion ensemble, soundtracks, and cartoon music.He attributes his musical growth to his studies with Professor John Bergamo, Pandit Tarnath Rao, Swapan Chadhouri and Leonice Shinemann where he studied tabla, while attending California Institute of the Arts on a full scholarship. Chris was also a member of the award winning Cal Arts Percussion Ensemble in 1979.
Chris Garcia attributes his "style"(?) to Listening to everything, logging in thousands of hours, practicing, rehearsing,performing and touring constantly with musicians interested in stretching and reinventing themselves throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Southeast Asia.Chris' drumming is unusual in that it incorporates not only the standard rhythms and their permutations, but also a fluency with odd time signatures and sonic textures, which he seamlessly incorporates into his playing.
Christopher Garcia's fascination for New Music and Sound as well as the advent of MIDI technology allow him the possibility of combining textures that have never before been available for the percussionist in live performance. Playing tabla next to state of the art MIDI instruments and being able to blend them musically is a challenge he continually explores.
He has been the drummer/percussionist of several critically acclaimed ensembles including:
Continuum, a musical cooperative since 1987. Although gigs have always been few and far between having this "workshop" to bring in ideas and hear them played by human beings on a consistent basis is always stimulating.
The Grande Mothers Re-Invented - featuring original and former members of the Mothers Of Invention.
Quarteto Nuevo - a world music improvising chamber ensemble, including classical guitar, pipa(the Chinese Lute), Oboe/Saxophones, bass, and North Indian and Middle Eastern percussion.
The Michael Vlatkovich Ensembles - Avant trombonist, composer extraordinaire
Danny Frankel
