Dillon Vado is a professional drummer and vibraphonist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a graduate of the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley. He grew up in San Jose, where he played many small club gigs on drums and marched snare drum for the Santa Clara Vanguard. He has recorded at Fantasy Studios, and played with many musicians at The Freight and Salvage, Yoshi’s, and the SF Jazz Center. He has also performed overseas at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy. Dillon has performed with Art Lande, Hafez Modirzadeh, Royal Hartigan, Marcus Shelby, Erik Jekabson, Jeff Denson, Alan Hall, Jovino Santos Neto, Marcos Silva and Kate McGarry. In 2014, Dillon won 1st place in the Jazz Search West soloist competition on vibraphone. Dillon was also acknowledged as the Most Promising Young Jazz Artist of 2017 from the Buddy Montgomery Jazz Legacy Awards. He can be heard playing both drums and vibes on recent recordings with Alan Hall’s Ratatet, The Jeff Denson Quartet, and Erik Jekabson’s Electric Squeezebox Orchestra and leads several of his own projects, including Never Weather, The Table Trio, and Beyond Words: Jazz and Poetry. Blissonance by Never Weather is his debut album as a band leader and was just released in January on Bay Area Label, Ridgeway Records.
Awards
1st Place, Jazz Search West (soloist competition) 2014
Most Promising Young Jazz Musician: Buddy Montgomery Jazz Legacy Awards 2017
Drummer and vibraphonist Dillon Vado is a Bay Area musician whose group, Never Weather, has produced a debut CD that shows a lot of versatility. The band uses a lineup that features, trumpet, saxophone and guitar to create music full of sudden twists and that sometimes straddles the line between jazz and rock. Guitarist Justin Rock, saxophonist Aaron Wolf and trumpeter Josh D. Reed make a forceful and springy front line that delivers a punchy unison charge on ...
"Oakland Drummer/Composer Dillon Vado Unleashes Exquisite Brain Storms With Blissonance, the Debut Album by His Quintet Never Weather" -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"These compositions take us into the creative mind and experimentation of Vado as a composer. They also explore opportunities for the ensemble players to express themselves in unique and improvisational ways." -Dee Dee McNeil: Musicalmemoirs Blog
"A snapshot of an evolving ensemble, Blissonance is the work of restless intelligence and bountiful heart." -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"No piece better captures the group’s poise and attention to detail than “Always Setting,” a spacious, attenuated melody connected by a mobile bass line. It’s an intricate piece of chamber jazz that gradually gains gravity without density. -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"Oakland Drummer/Composer Dillon Vado Unleashes Exquisite Brain Storms With Blissonance, the Debut Album by His Quintet Never Weather" -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"These compositions take us into the creative mind and experimentation of Vado as a composer. They also explore opportunities for the ensemble players to express themselves in unique and improvisational ways." -Dee Dee McNeil: Musicalmemoirs Blog
"A snapshot of an evolving ensemble, Blissonance is the work of restless intelligence and bountiful heart." -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"No piece better captures the group’s poise and attention to detail than “Always Setting,” a spacious, attenuated melody connected by a mobile bass line. It’s an intricate piece of chamber jazz that gradually gains gravity without density. -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"Heady and intricate but never over-thought or busy, Vado’s music reflects the collective personality forged by musicians trained in the art of careful, responsive listening." -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
"What makes Blissonance such an impressive debut album is the music’s combination of emotional and musical intelligence." -Andy Gilbert: Mercury News
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