Jamie has been playing Middle Eastern and North African percussion since 1996. Her teachers include Hamid Drake, Quentin Shaw, Najib Bahri and master instrument makers Hamid and Hichams Chebaddan in Meknes, Morocco.

She is interested in exploring rhythm as a technology, capable of affecting change on both psychological and physical levels.

Some of the groups Jamie has played and recorded with are Environmental Encroachment, Trapeze, and Btrfly Bush. She also teaches music and instrument building both privately, and through organizations such as Chicago's Gallery 37 Program and the Steckman Studio of Music. Jamie is a founding member of the Tok Tok Percussion Guild, a collective of instrument makers working in wood, metals, and clay.

For her, instrument building is a way of completing the circle between the tangibility of materials and the intangible experience of music. She specializes in custom frame drums, goat or fish skin, tunable or non-tunable with optional snare.

For more information about instruction or custom instuments contact jamie@ringingear.com or call 312-782-3538.