The New School for
Jazz and Contemporary Music

Amir Ziv is a critically acclaimed artist who has helped shape the downtown NYC music scene over the last 16 years. He has studied with some of the most recorded and innovative drummers in cinematic, pop and jazz music history including Kenwood Dennard, Efrain Toro, Jim Priess, Joe Chambers, Joe Porcaro, and Ralph Humphry. As a sideman, Ziv has performed and/or recorded with John Zorn, Medeski Martin and Wood, Ornette Coleman, Sean Lennon, David Broza, Lauryn Hill, Carl Craig, DJ Spooky, Wayne Krantz, DJ Logic, Cibo Mato, Pizzicato Five and for the last decade Cyro Baptista's Beat The Donkey – at venues across the globe such as Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Carre Theater – Amsterdam, Festival d'Agadir – Morocco and the Bonnaroo Festival. Amir is the co-founder of DROID (w/Jordan McLean, Adam Holzman, Tim LeFebvre and Yossi Fine) and founder/leader of KOTKOT (w/Marc Ribot, Cyro Baptista and Shahzad Ismaily). His students have gone to work with some of music's most established luminaries, including Wynton Marsalis, Roy Haynes, Bilal Oliver, Jeff “Tain” Watts and Christian McBride. Amir is co-founder of Sound Chemistry Records and founder of the Living Arts Apprenticeship Program (LAAP); a cross-disciplinary “live-on-the-land” arts intensive that discovers and inspires new talent and curates future recording projects.