Study with A Master
Michael Hinton received his Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School as a scholarship student of the legend Saul Goodman, solo timpanist with the NY Phil Harmonic for fifty years.
Notable Artists & Bands
Michael’s background includes performing and recording with the Japanese drumming group, Kodo. He has also toured with Andrea Bocelli. Michael is a lifelong Grateful Dead Family Member and has performed numerous shows and projects with them. He was mentioned in a recent book by Bill Kreutzmann about his years with The Grateful Dead. He was also an interim member of Jefferson Airplane, which he joined instead of attending his sophomore year of high school. He later went on to work with the San Francisco Symphony, Ballet, and Opera orchestras prior to attending Juilliard.
For more than 20 years, Michael has been a member of the New York Symphonic Ensemble, and spent more than 10 years as a member of Liza Minnelli’s touring band in the 1980s traveling throughout Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia. He has also performed with Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and a hundred other well-known artists.
Get to Know Music Instructor, Michael Hinton
“Michael Hinton embodies a life of drumming and percussion on a daily basis and
is a constant source of inspiration.”
— Mickey Hart, Drummer for The Grateful Dead
“Michael Hinton is musical poetry in motion. His depth of musical sensitivity is
incomparable among percussionists worldwide. He is truly one of our treasures.”
— J. Rimberg
“Just get Michael.”
— M. Shoenberg, Composer of “Les Miserables” & “Miss Saigon”
New York Productions of Broadway Shows
Michael has spent more than 30 continuous years performing in NY productions of Broadway shows, including “Miss Saigon”, “Les Miserables”, “Dream Girls”, “West Side Story”, “Song and Dance”, “On the Twentieth Century”, “The Act”, “Singin’ in the Rain”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Nine”, “The Tap Dance Kid”, “Man of La Mancha”, “The Phantom of the Opera”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “All That Jazz”, “South Pacific”, “They’re Playing Our Song”, “The Threepenny Opera”, “Can-Can”, and others. He has also frequently performed at Carnegie Hall, as well as on The Today Show, The Tonight Show, Good Morning America. Michael has participated in music for many feature movies, he also assisted in the production of the music score for the movie Apocalypse Now.
Other Popular Acts
Michael has appeared in the Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Bolshoi Orchestra, the Joffrey Ballet, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, and as an orchestra member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. In addition, he has performed with Pope Benedict XVI at Yankee Stadium. Michael also worked along with Francis Ford Coppola on the film, Apocalypse Now.
Current Interests
Currently Michael is an Afro-Cuban music devotee, having found clave as a core to all kinds of music, whether it is Beethoven or Frank Sinatra. In addition to his teaching practice, Michael leads his band, Foreign Exchange, his first venture as a jazz pianist.