Asaf Sirkis (born 1969) is an Israeli jazz drummer,[1] composer and educator.
Early life
Sirkis spent his teens and early twenties in Rehovot, Israel where he began drum lessons aged 12. His early musical influences were The Beatles, The Police, Yes, Allan Holdsworth, Weather Report, classical music, Arabic, Balkan, Klezmer, Pop, and Israeli folk music. In 1990, shortly after he completed his three-year national service he started his full-time professional career working as an all-around drummer in Israel. He has played with notable jazz musicians from Israel and abroad including Harold Rubin, Albert Beger, Yair Dalal and Eyal Sela.
Career
In 1993 Sirkis moved to Tel Aviv and soon after formed the Asaf Sirkis trio featuring Kobi Arad on keyboards, and Gabriel Mayer on electric bass. With that line up he recorded his first solo album One Step Closer (1996) as well as touring in Israel with the trio. In 1997 he formed the 'Asaf Sirkis & The Inner Noise' trio. The Inner Noise was a unique trio and the first jazz/rock group to incorporate an innovative line up of church organ guitar and drums.
Asaf left Israel in 1998, settling in London in 1999. In 2000 Sirkis re-formed the Inner Noise trio with Steve Lodder on church organ and Mike Outram on guitar. The band has recorded three acclaimed albums - Inner Noise, We Are Falling and The Song Within. Shortly after he arrived in London he met Gilad Atzmon with whom he formed The Orient House Ensemble and recorded 7 albums, including Exile, which won "Best CD of the Year" at the BBC Jazz Award 2003 while the band was nominated for "Best Band" in 2004. After almost 10 years in the OHE, Sirkis left the band in 2009 to focus on his solo career and other collaborations.
Since 2006 Sirkis has been collaborating with reeds player and composer Tim Garland with whom he toured the world and recorded many albums.
Since 2014, Sirkis is co-leading the Sirkis/Bialas International Quartet together with Polish singer/composer Sylwia Bialas. The Quartet features pianist Frank Harrison and Scottish bassist Kevin Glasgow. Their debut album Come To Me was released in 2014 at the London Jazz Festival. Come To Me has been selected as one of the best albums of 2015 at All About Jazz website by several reviewers and the band has toured extensively since the release date. The Quartet's new double album 'Our New Earth' is scheduled to be released in 2019 on Moonjune Records.
Since 2016, Asaf has been collaborating with various artists on the Moonjune Records record label. Notably, the Reuter/Wingfield/Stavi Sirkis collaboration album has been selected as a masterpiece of 2017 at DownBeat magazine as well as receiving rave reviews. Asaf can be heard on many recent Moonjune albums alongside Spanish guitarist Carles Benavent, Nguyen Le, Dewa Budjana, Indonesian pianist Dwiki Dharmawan, Gary Husband, Mark Wingfield, Markus Reuter, Jorge Padro, Beledo and many more.
In January 2023, Asaf joined legendary British Jazz-Rock group Soft Machine and has been touring world wide with the band as well as recording a single for My Only Wish record label (released 2024).
Recently, Asaf has created a free, ongoing YouTube series called 'Time For Space music diary' which features many old and new unreleased music. Many of the songs on the Time For Space series can be found on Asaf's bandcamp page as play-along tracks for drummers (Time For Space pplay-along for drummers volumes 1-9).
Link to the Time For Space playlist:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEF6WYe5Abg&list=PLaq6h18rnEfU39O1vQflxBapx0SU1fwiB&index=51)
Sirkis has been studying the art of the south Indian vocal percussion (Konnakol) at the Tamil centre in west London under the guidance of master percussionist Mr Paramasamy Kirupakaran and from various other sources. Asaf has developed a simple, step-by-step method of teaching Konnakol that can help any instrumentalist or vocalist of any musical genre and level to increase rhythmic awareness and focus. Nowadays, Sirkis is involved in a variety of educational work, bringing Konnakol to western music education as a useful tool of understanding rhythm for western musicians. He has given many workshops and seminars around the world on the subject and has a YouTube channel with Konnakol tutorials. As of 2017, he is a principal lecturer in jazz drums at Leeds College of Music and teaches drums and Konnakol at Trinity Laban Conservatory in London.
