About Randy Jenkins

    Randy Jenkins is a musical anomaly… he’s neither this, nor that.  Instead, he is an amalgamation of varied influences.  His musical roots can be traced to the church, but at an early age he was introduced to Jazz music and it’s sub-genre Fusion.  Randy quickly took a liking to Fusion and began to emulate some of the premier drummers of the genre.  However, having been born in 1979, he experienced first hand the explosion of the synthesizer in popular music via 80s Synthwave and Synthpop.  Because of that, the synthesizer is an integral part of his compositions.  

 

    At the same time, Randy grew up in what is widely considered the “golden era” of Hip-Hop.  Randy was fascinated with B-boy culture and would often draw graffiti style characters and writing.  As a kid in the 80s, Randy loved Rock music from that time period as well.  He was drawn to bands like U2 (In The Name Of Love), Van Halen (Jump, Panama), Tears For Fears (Shout, Everyone Wants To Rule The World) Simple Minds (Don’t You) and many others.  As Randy was entering into his teenage years, he witnessed the significant merge of R&B and Hip-Hop.  Randy found a home in this new genre.  To him, the rhythm of Hip-Hop and the soulful musicality of R&B was the perfect match.  It was this genre that inspired Randy to become a producer.  He began to try to make beats on an old Yamaha keyboard as well as try and learn the chords of his favorite songs.  

 

    A change took place when Randy was around seventeen… he happened to purchase the Dave Weckl album “Hard Wired”.  This would be a pivotal event in Randy’s musical journey, as it reintroduced him to the Fusion music he listened to as a child.  Suddenly, he was once again enamored with the genre.  After high school, Randy enrolled in the music conservatory at SUNY Purchase College majoring in Jazz Performance.  Purchase college was breeding ground for great musicians and his skills began to become razor sharp.  He formed long lasting relationships and began to really take his musical gift seriously.  While there, he was introduced to an entirely knew world of music, most notably, the music of J.S. Bach.  Purchase College also provided recording studios and production suites for qualified students.  The access to quality studios on campus fueled his desire to write and create original music.  What started off as ambition to become a Hip-Hop / R&B producer quickly morphed into the pursuit of being a composer.  Because of a comment made by a fellow student, Randy also began to study movie scores.  For the next several years he would study the likes of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman, and Harry Gregson-Williams.  The emotional journey created by film music is something Randy has tried to apply to the music he writes, regardless of the genre. 

 

 

    Randy has been able to work with or share the stage with several artists and producers.  Some of those artist include Donald Lawrence, Asaph Ward, Bink!, Darlene Love, Leela James, and Milton Vann.  While there have been glimpses of Randy’s influences in his work with others, no body of work embodied the total of those influences and experiences like his debut album Kairos.  It encompasses all of who Randy is as a man first and then as a musician.  Everything… his childhood, his upbringing, his family, friends, joys, pains, heroes, villains, non-musical influences; it all came to the surface to create Kairos.  It is the real Randy… unfiltered.

 

 

    A lot more could be said, but there’s also a whole lot more for Randy to experience.  As of now he’s in an evolutionary state.  Stick around to see what’s next.