Layne Redmond one of today's most exciting performers on the frame drum

Layne Redmond has followed an extremely unusual path specializing in the small hand-held frame drum played primarily by women in the ancient Mediterranean world. From 1981 through 1990 she performed and recorded the first contemporary frame drum compositions with percussionist, Glen Velez for European and American labels. During this period she intensively researched the playing styles and history of the frame drum in religious and cultural rituals culminating in her book, When The Drummers Were Women. This book details a lost history of a time when women were the primary percussionists in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, Greece and Rome and also explains why they are not today. When The Drummers Were Women was released by Random House in June 1997 in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.

Redmond is recognized as one of today's most exciting performers on the frame drum and has been featured in many music festivals including the Touch Festival in Berlin, Seattle Bumbershoot Festival, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Tambores do Mundo (drum festival in San Luis, Brazil) and as a soloist at the 1995 World Wide Percussion Festival in Brazil. On March 2, 2002 Redmond and Tommy Brunjes performed and gave clinics at the Vienna International Percussion Festival 2002.

Redmond is a master clinician and has taught and lectured numerous times at the Percussive Arts Society's International Convention, the National Association of Music Therapy and in 1998 she gave the keynote lecture and performance at the eighth annual Healing Sound Colloquium. Some of the venues she's taught or performed at are Penn State, Vassar College, William's College, Bucknell College, Hartford Seminary, Andover Newton Theological Institute, Sam Ash Music Institute, Berklee School of Music, Calif. Institute of the Arts, Roulette, The Knitting Factory, and Esalen Institute.

Her recordings include:
Since the Beginning, Trance Union (with Tommy Be) and Sundaryalahari: The Wave of Bliss.

Her best selling meditation cds include:
Chanting the Chakras, Chakra Breathing Meditation and Heart Chakra Meditations.

Sounds True released her book/cd Chakra Meditation on the classic teachings of yoga and the chakras in 2004.

With Rosangela Silvestre she produced:
Flowers of Fire: Sacred Chants and Rhythms of Candomble. Her music videos from this project, Xango and Iemanja, have gained a world wide following.

She created two instructional videos for Interworld Music:
Rhythmic Wisdom and A Sense of Time. She was the first woman to have a Signature Series of world percussion instruments with Remo, Inc., one of the world's largest manufacturers of percussion instruments and drum heads.