Inés Velasco - Drummer and Composer

Suggested Watching

Dodgeball

Zoolander

Suggested Reading

Descripción de un brillo azul cobalto by Jorge Esquinca

Description of a Flash of Cobalt Blue (English Translation) by Jorge Esquinca

Suggested Listening

Three Stories EP by Inés Velasco

Nights on Earth by Vince Mendoza

Music for Large & Ensembles by Kenny Wheeler

Little Big by Aaron Parks

You Belong There by Daniel Rossen

Inés Velasco is a composer, arranger, producer and drummer born in Guadalajara, México. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music with a dual degree in Jazz Composition and Performance. 

She has worked in as an arranger and orchestrator for different projects and artists which include Snarky Puppy with the Metropole Orkest, Alina Engirbayan, José Mercé and the National Jazz Orchestra of México. She was chosen to participate in the 2014 Metropole Orkest’s ‘Arranger’s Workshop’, under the tutelage of Vince Mendoza, where she arranged for jazz vocalist Gregory Porter. 

Ms. Velasco worked as Project Manager for the Spanish label and production house Casa Limón where she produced videos for the broadcast television network Univisión and for SONY Latin. In 2020, her work was performed at the ‘Jazz Composers’ Showcase’ series conducted by Miho Hazama at the Jazz Gallery. She currently lives in New York where she splits her time writing, arranging and working at the booking and management agency CAMI Music. 

As a young musician in Guadalajara, she studied music theory with professor Yosvany Estepe of the Escuela Nacional de las Artes (Cuba). While a student at Berklee, Ms. Velasco studied jazz composition and arranging with Ayn Inserto and Mitch Haupers, and studied drums under the tutelage of Ian Froman and Terri Lyne Carrington.  During her first year as a composer, she received both the Quincy Jones Award and the Tadd Dameron Award, the only student to receive multiple departments from the Professional Writing Division.