Joshua Wheatley - Intuition (2019)

Joshua Wheatley is a native of England and graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music. He is an accomplished drummer, pianist, composer, and arranger currently residing in Valencia, Spain where he teaches at Berklee College of Music. In addition to teaching, Josh composes and performs on drums and piano. His debut CD Crisis was released August 2016, consisting of his original music for quartet.

Josh has been drumming since he was 2 years old. He began playing on pots and pans from his mum’s kitchen. Josh’s father, a jazz saxophonist, noticed Josh’s good sense of rhythm. He would watch his father’s videotapes and drum along. Josh began formal training on drums at age 4 and by age 6 was reading rhythmic notation. At the same age he began drumming in his fathers’ church band. By middle school he had taken up piano lessons and in high school Josh was involved in the honors music program consisting of Big Band, Jazz Combo and Classical Wind Ensemble. He also studied Advanced Placement Music Theory. Josh became student director/mentor in the high school Jazz program and began composing original music.

At age 15 he received a scholarship to attend the Berklee Percussion Festival in 2009 and in 2011 he attended the Berklee Five Week Summer Program and was selected as the drummer for the Jazz All Stars ensemble. Berklee professor Mark White spent several weeks rehearsing with Josh for the “Blowout Concert” at the Berklee Performance Center. In recommendation, Professor White wrote “Wow! What a great candidate for the school! Top- notch 2 drum chops, ears, reading, the whole package. He drove the band and played terrifically at the gig...”

Josh was awarded the UNH Clark Terry Jazz Awards for ‘Outstanding Musicianship’ on both drums and piano. In 2012 he was selected by NAFME as the drummer for the All-Nationals Honor Jazz Ensemble and performed at the JFK Center for Performing Arts in Washington D.C. under the direction of Terell Stafford. In the fall of 2014 Josh was invited to the Berklee International school USFQ (University of San Francisco Quito) in Ecuador, where he gave clinics, workshops and private lessons, ending with an album release concert as part of the Daniel Toledo Trio.
In 2015 Josh performed with Philipp Gerschlauer, a leading voice in the Microtonal Jazz Avant-garde. Josh has worked extensively with David Fiuczynski including opening for the Zappa Project Object Band at The Met in Rhode Island, performing at the Microtonal Jazz Festival in Berlin, Germany and presenting Fiuczynski’s album Flam! Bam! Pan-Asian MicroJam at the ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn NYC, after which was mentioned in DownBeat Magazine.
In July 2016, Josh performed with John McLaughlin at the Berklee Valencia Commencement Ceremony.

Currently Josh continues to teach at the Berklee Valencia Campus in the undergraduate program. He designed CIGE (Contemporary Instrumental Gospel Ensemble) an ensemble that stems from his passion and desire to teach his approach on the sound of contemporary gospel music.