Neal Smith

Grammy-award winner Neal Smith has been playing drums since the age of five. By the time he completed high school he had achieved a remarkable list of performance accomplishments and earned an impressive array of awards, scholarships, and honors. Neal became the first African American to earn a degree in Jazz Studies from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Neal leads his own group, which performs original compositions as well as classic arrangements of jazz standards, regularly in clubs and concert halls, at colleges and universities, and at U.S. and International Jazz Festivals.