Stewart Copeland

Stewart Copeland is an American drummer and composer, born Stewart Armstrong Copeland on July 16, 1952 in Alexandria, Virginia. His father was a CIA officer and his mother a British archaeologist, and the family moved to Cairo and then Beirut, where he began drum lessons at twelve. He worked as road manager and then drummer for the British progressive rock band Curved Air in the mid-1970s, and married its singer Sonja Kristina in 1982. In 1977 he founded the Police with Sting and guitarist Henry Padovani, whom Andy Summers soon replaced. Copeland wrote much of the band's earliest material, including its first single Fall Out, and his clipped, reggae-inflected hi-hat and rimshot playing became one of the group's defining sounds. He also released records during that period under the pseudonym Klark Kent. The Police were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 and reunited to tour in 2007 and 2008. Away from the band he has scored films including Wall Street in 1987, written for television, composed operas such as Electric Saint in 2021, based on the life of Nikola Tesla, and written ballets, and he produced the music for the Spyro the Dragon video game series between 1998 and 2002, returning to write a new theme for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy in 2018. He won his seventh Grammy in 2023 with Ricky Kej for Divine Tides, and released Wild Concerto in 2025, built around field recordings by the audio naturalist Martyn Stewart. He currently tours a spoken-word show, Have I Said Too Much, an evening of conversation, photographs, video and audience questions about the Police and his work in Hollywood.

Subscribe to this calendar

Upcoming shows