“I feel that music can open our awareness. That’s what I want the music to do. We all come from someplace powerful – we just need to find that place inside. My goal is to rest in that openness and let go. The more I practice this, the more my natural faith develops. The music finds its strength in that. That’s what I want to share.” FK
Franklin Kiermyer first came to prominence as a drummer, composer and bandleader following the release of Solomon's Daughter, his highly acclaimed 3rd album that features John Coltrane alumnus Pharoah Sanders on saxophone. Widely regarded for his intense passionate energy, spiritual feeling and distinctive sound, his 10 albums and many performances have brought his music international recognition.
"Drummer Franklin Kiermyer is that rare jazzman – blessed with the ecstatic quality of his free-bop attack.” - ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE
“Kiermyer plays (and composes) with an almost evangelical belief in jazz as a form of pure inspiration.” - ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Kiermyer supercharges spiritual modality…he plays with volcanic authority.” - DOWN BEAT
“Rhythm is Next to Godliness. Enough to make you believe that music can still be frightening as well as sacred.” - THE VILLAGE VOICE
“His writing is fiercely primal and his drumming ferocious, unbridled… a journey in the Sun Ship to heights of spiritual experience through music…captures that mystical ecstasy with magnificent aplomb” - JAZZIZ
“Imagine if drummer Elvin Jones and Pianist McCoy Tyner had not left the John Coltrane Quartet in early 1966 and had spent another year with the great saxophonist; it might have sounded something like this.” - L.A. JAZZ SCENE
“Kiermyer is a drummer who follows his own muse, creating a sound of yearning and revelation…derived from an intensely personal sensibility.” - JAZZ TIMES
“Few musicians approach the music from the same spiritual wellspring that “Trane” did. Fiery, the musical equivalent of a perfect storm: It explodes and takes you for a ride. The playing is superb.” - MTV
Scatter The Atoms That Remain is Kiermyer's present band, founded in 2017 composed of saxophonist Michael Troy, pianist Davis Whitfield, bassist Otto Gardner.
"... a sense of shared catharsis through music that is at once majestic, ferocious, and relatable ... the words “ecstasy” and “ecstatic” appear almost predictably, but sometimes a word is just right. Scatter The Atoms That Remain channel the kind of beautiful, disciplined intensity exemplified by late John Coltrane. This type of universal, non-denominational spirituality simply feels good." ~ Jazz At Lincoln Center
"There may not be a quartet out there that best picks up where the Coltrane Quartet left off than drummer Franklin Kiermyer’s Scatter The Atoms That Remain." ~ The New York City Jazz Record
