Stephen Kent (musician)


Stephen Kent is a professional didgeridoo performer, percussionist, composer and recording artist. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Musical career

Forming the band Lights in a Fat City, he made the first contemporary releases of didjeridu music in the northern hemisphere in 1988.
With the band Trance Mission, he joined the ranks of Jon Hassell, Steve Roach, and Robert Rich in exploring a primal, techno-tribal music. Trance Mission was co-formed in San Francisco in 1992 by Stephen Kent, Beth Custer, John Loose and Kenneth Newby, making up the quartet which produced 3 globally acclaimed CDs on the City of Tribes label over as many years in the mid-nineties. After several European tours and many live appearances on the West Coast of the USA, Loose and Newby moved on to other projects while Custer and Kent continued as Trance Mission, with Eda Maxym joining on vocals and Canadian Peter Valsamis on Drums/Samples. This version of Trance Mission produced a live CD, "A Day out of Time", in 1999. Another version of Trance Mission performed at the Starwood Festival in 2006, featuring Stephen Kent, Peter Valsamis, Geoffrey Gordon, Eda Maxym and cellist Rufus Cappadocia.
In the 21st century Stephen Kent released two more solo CDs, Oil & Water and Living Labyrinths, on his own Family Tree label. Recent projects include several years of combining with Tuvan throat singing sensations, Chirgilchin as Karashay, ongoing work with Moroccan musician Yassir Chadly, performing with Malian oriented bluesman Markus James and his group the Wassonrai, Eda Maxym's Imagination Club, and the Del Sol String Quartet, who recently performing at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
His current projects include two trio groups oriented towards Indian music. One is Australian Bebop Ragas with Teed Rockwell and Sameer Gupta. The second, Baraka Moon, includes Geoffrey Gordon and Sukhawat Ali Khan.

Recording artist

Kent has released several recordings as a solo artist and appears on recordings of group projects such as Trance Mission, Beasts of Paradise, and Lights in a Fat City. He has also done session work with artists such as Airto Moreira, and Badi Assad. He produced and performed on the album Halcyon Days together with Steve Roach and Kenneth Newby, and performed on the soundtrack of the Terence McKenna video Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum.

Discography