Corey Fogel

Corey Fogel is a drummer and performance artist who improvises with sound, materials, gestures, and time.

Biography

A short bio for my favorite Jewish drummer and soul brother, Corey Fogel...


Bio for Corey Fogel
by Adam Overton, 2006
[pdf]



Corey Fogel is relentless. His musical magic derives from patiently waiting, finding and preserving moments of serenity and infectious rhythm, then skeptically smashing that symmetry as soon as he gets a whiff of any magical complacency. He is against mythology's illusions and desires a blunter Now: honest, bare and pre-teen. He "says" what other musicians are afraid to "say" with a seriousness commingled with humor, wrapped so subtly that the two are often confused; he speaks his mind [seemingly] regardless of context, reveling in the uncomfortable adrenaline glow of a conversation that cannot recover from his bringing up that one unspeakable Word. Corey plays not with drumsticks but with judges' gavels, fervidly passing judgment upon music with easy answers and excuses, presenting instead a frenzy of objection, counter-argument, and expert witness. He plays with the spirit of a Jewish grandmother whose warm and nurturing embrace is swiftly exchanged for a razor-lipped critique, who easily confuses her subjective reality for our objective one - and it hurts because far too often she is half-right, and you still desire her soup. "You should eat more," says his cymbal. "You better marry a nice Jewish girl," says his snare drum. And yet he is not without an impeccable caress that keeps his codependent compatriots like us coming back again and again for the splendors of musical make-up sex. Corey takes his music too seriously, too anti-heroically, and looks us deep in the eyes expecting the same from us - and it turns us ON. We desire his attention, his bashful grin, his sexy non sequiturs, his parallel universe where we-should-know-better. And in the end deep down we all understand what big long drumsticks mean...