began his professional career at the young age of 16 playing for the blues singer Mighty Joe Young. Classically trained at the American Conservatory of Music and Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, under the tutoring of Mr.Harold Jones, drumset studies and Mr. Edward Parimba, percussion studies respectively, his reputation as a drummer grew quickly. He has played backup for Billy Eckstein, Marvin Gaye, Bette Midler and Vicki Carr. He was house drummer at the Schubert Theater in Chicago for 10 years where he played for national touring companies in Hair, The Wiz, The Me Nobody Knows, Promises Promises, 1776, Bubblin Brown Sugar, Raisin in the Sun, Grease, One More Time, and Ain´t Misbehavin.
Thurman Barker is a charter member of the Association for the Advancement Creative Musicians (AACM), with which he continues his association to this day. He has performed and is known worldwide. He has recorded with Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Myers, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Sam Rivers, Billy Bang, Joseph Jarman and Henry Threadgill. He has produced four recordings under his own record label, Uptee Productions.
In 1994 his work "Dialogue", commissioned by the World Music Institute, was premiered at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. He was commissioned by the World Music Institute in1996 to do another piece and has been commissioned twiced to do projects by the Delaware Vallely Chamber Orchestra in Sullivan County, New York. The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra premiered two chamber pieces of his; "Expansions" in May of 1999 and "Time Factor" in October of the year 2000.
In the fall of 1999, Mr Barker was given the honor of lecturing at Smolny Institute in St Petersberg, Russia. He has taught and developed the jazz program at Bard College in Annadale-on-Hudson, New York, since 1993 and is an Associate Professor of Jazz Studies.
