Joe Bergamini maintains a diverse career as a drumming performer and educator. Enjoying various styles of playing, he is most well-known for his progressive rock drumming in the bands Happy the Man and 4Front. Joe is a fixture on the New York scene, and has performed in the Broadway productions of Movin’ Out,Jesus Christ Superstar (2012 revival), Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, Spider-Man, In the Heights, Bring It On, Million Dollar Quartet, and The Lion King. He has also appeared on the first national tours of Movin’ Outand Jersey Boys. For 11 years Joe was the drummer in the popular New York City area band Power Windows, and has performed and recorded with many other artists as a sideman.
Recognized internationally as an educator, Joe has given hundreds of drum clinics in schools, retail stores, and conventions over the past 15 years. He has appeared at the Ultimate Drummers Weekend (Melbourne, Australia), the Cape Breton Drum Festival (Nova Scotia, Canada), KOSA (Vermont, USA), and the Sonny Emory Drum Camp (Atlanta, USA). In 2007 he was the featured drum clinician on the first Tama Dayz US tour. He also maintains a busy private teaching schedule at his studio in New Jersey, and is an associate professor at MoravianCollege in Bethlehem, PA. Among Joe’s many private students who have gone on to pro careers is world-renowned jazz drummer Mark Guiliana.
Joe is very active in the music publishing world. He is the Senior Drum Editor for Hudson Music, where he oversees all book projects and acts as an associate producer on various DVD productions. In this capacity he has worked closely with some the world’s greatest drummers in development of their educational products, including Steve Smith, Stanton Moore, Gavin Harrison, Carmine Appice, Benny Greb, John Blackwell, Aaron Spears, Keith Carlock, David Garibaldi, Jason Bittner, Derek Roddy, and many others. Through Hudson Music, Joe collaborated on two major projects with Neil Peart: Taking Center Stage: A Lifetime of Live Performance, a best-selling 3-DVD set co-produced by Joe, in which Neil discusses and performs all his classic works with Rush; and a companion book of the same name, written entirely by Joe and released in 2012, which is a 208-page, full color, coffee-table style retrospective on Neil’s long career.
As an author, Joe has won three Modern Drummer Readers Poll awards for his drum books. He is the author of Pedal Control (with Dom Famularo), Turn It Up & Lay It Down, MD Classic Tracks, It’s Your Move (with Dom Famularo), Drum Techniques of Led Zeppelin, Operation: Rockenfield – The Drumming of Queensryche, Drumming Out Of The Shadows – The Drumming of Jason Bittner and Shadows Fall, and Polyrhythmic Potential (with Chris Pennie). He was formerly Percussion Editor for Carl Fischer Publications, has worked on various promotional and R&D projects for Tama drums, and is co-owner (with Dom Famularo) of Wizdom Media (an independent music publisher). Joe is also an occasional writer for Modern Drummer magazine.
In 2012, Joe partnered with Hudson Music co-founder Rob Wallis to develop Drum Guru, the first comprehensive educational app for drummers. Drum Guru is currently available in iPad and iPhone versions. As a co-producer of all content for the app, Joe has worked closely with drummers such as Steve Gadd, Chad Smith, Mike Portnoy, and Steve Smith in preparing their educational content, and appears in the app as an artist/teacher himself.