Steve Bloom has played percussion professionally in thousands of performances and recordings in Middle Eastern and Persian, Cuban, Latin, Brazilian, Sephardic, Jazz, Blues, Gospel, New Age, and Celtic styles. He is known for his use of various “hybrid” drum kits, the better to combine his command of hand- and- finger drums with more traditional elements of the trap kit. He has performed and/or recorded in over a dozen countries from the Middle East to Nigeria to Ecuador and Canada with a wide variety of artists, including Tito Puente, Pedrito Martinez, King Sunny Ade’, and Babatunde Olatunji, guitarists Peter White and Dennis Cahill, pianist Gregg Karukas, jazz trumpeters Doc Cheatham and Jon Faddis, flutists Paul Horn and Nestor Torres, and bassists Andy Gonzales and Michael Manring. Bloom is a seasoned Tombak, Daf and Damom player; he co-directed the SAMA Persian Percussion Ensemble, with whom he performed for the full General Assembly of the United Nations, introduced by Ban Ki-Moon, in 2006. In recent years Bloom has been playing regularly in Afro-Cuban ceremonies featuring consecrated bata drums. He often plays a drum kit which is a hybrid of hand and stick drums with South American artists, and with the Bill Baker Band.
