• Key player and secret weapon with important, award-winning creative artists and organizations at significant periods in their development, New York based drummer, cellist, composer and producer Elliot Humberto Kavee generates work that continues to impact audiences and fellow artists internationally.
• For 24 years, the drummer for NEA Jazz Master Henry Threadgill’s longest working group: Zooid. Kavee’s noteworthy contributions to live premieres of new works at major festivals worldwide, celebrated runs at the Village Vanguard and several critically-acclaimed recordings (including 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner, “In For a Penny, In For a Pound”) continue to enhance Threadgill’s singular vision.
• Member of the Tony Award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe collective for seven years. Playwright, actor, composer, multi-instrumentalist and the only musical director in the Troupe’s 52 year history to win a Dramalogue Award. Kavee co-creates seven original musical plays with the group. To represent the 90s period in their 40 year company retrospective, the Troupe republishes "Back to Normal", a musical play Kavee conceived and co-wrote.
• Kavee’s work (drummer, cellist, composer, producer) with Asian Improv aRts on multiple acclaimed recordings with JJA Jazz Hero Award winner Francis Wong and other AIR artists is key building the catalogue during critical early years (1993-2002) of collective’s 35 year history.
• Co-founds Grammy-nominated Omar Sosa’s group. Drumming on award-winning recordings and world tours over 6 years, Kavee co-develops a musical format and practice that Sosa continues to successfully apply.
• In 1999 drummer, composer and producer Kavee co-founds the collective Fieldwork with MacArthur Fellow Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Aaron Stewart (later Guggenheim Fellow Steve Lehman). Through 5 years of considerable original research, workshopping, and critically-acclaimed recordings and performances, the group generates several novel musical templates that are influential to this day. Records and co-produces several works for Pi Recordings, including Fieldwork's "Your Life Flashes", that co-establish the label’s aesthetic early on.
• Guggenheim Fellows Myra Melford (Be Bread 2003-2008) and Rudresh Mahanthappa (Quartet 1998-2005, "Kinsmen" debut 2005) contract Elliot for performance and recording at crucial points in their work, tapping him to codevelop an ensemble vocabulary they continue to employ.
• Composer, percussionist and cellist with Club Foot Orchestra; his work is featured in the live score to G.W. Pabst's Pandora Box (performed at the San Francisco Film Festival and at Lincoln Center) and underscoring for CBS' "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat".
