Samm Bennett is a drummer, percussionist, and electronic music producer. He is also an improviser, composer, and singer/songwriter in the avant-garde rock and jazz realms. Among Bennett's various projects and involvements as a drummer is his work with cellist
Tom Cora in
George Cartwright's
Curlew, their own group 3rd Person, and with
Kazutoki Umezu. He has worked with
Elliott Sharp in
Carbon, and Semantics, which the two co-founded along with
Ned Rothenberg, who also led a double band that Bennett played drums for. Bennett performed
John Zorn's piece for two drummers and narration, "Hwang Chin-ee," frequently during the late '80s. In 1984, Bennett moved to New York, and the next year co-founded
Bosho, which would later include
Hahn Rowe, a guitarist Bennett had collaborated with in many projects, including
Chunk. Led by Bennett,
Chunk lasted from 1990 until 1995 and featured him as singer and songwriter. After
Chunk, Bennett and
Rowe had a duo project called
History of the Last Five Minutes, which had one self-titled release and toured Europe and Israel. Bennett moved to Tokyo in 1996, and began Gone Wrong -- an acoustic band featuring his songs -- with shamisen player
Tanaka Yumiko, who played in
Ground Zero.
Besides songwriting for his bands, Bennett has also composed music for silent films, including several of the Fleischer Brothers 1920s #Koko the Clown cartoons. He has experimented with sampling and electronics and included them in his live performances for many years, as with one '90s project, the percussion/electronics/media unit Dent. Another project in which he gets to focus more on electronics is GoNoGoNoGo, his duo with Haruna Ito. He has improvised with many musicians of note from North America and Japan, including Don Byron, LaDonna Smith, Christian Marclay, and Otomo Yoshihide. Bennett has toured throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. The late '90s found him busy with another songwriting project, Tremolo Chapters. ~ Joslyn Layne, Rovi