Johnny Hunter is a northern UK-based drummer and composer who comes from a background of both the Avant-Garde and the more mainstream Jazz. His own “chordless” quartet, set up to explore the freedom and limitations of having no chordal instrument, have been recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3, and have performed across the country in notable venues such as London’s Ronnie Scott’s, the Manchester Jazz Festival, Birmingham Jazzlines at Symphony Hall, Liverpool International Jazz Festival, among many others. He also leads the piano trio Fragments, originally a workshop band formed to research and develop new approaches to improvising and composing for improvisers.
In 2018, he was selected as one of the composers on Sound and Music’s New Voices programme. Outside of his own music, Johnny performs across the UK in many other groups including with Misha Gray’s Prehistoric Jazz Quintet, Liverpool-based group playing heavy modal Jazz inspired by John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and the like; Cath Roberts’s Sloth Racket; The Spirit Farm, and many more.