Steve Rucker
Professor of Practice and Director of Contemporary Drumset Studies, Frost School of MusicBM Studio Music & Jazz; MM Jazz Performance
Composer, drumset artist, producer and educator Steve Rucker has taught at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music since 1979, where he is Professor of Practice and Director of Contemporary Drumset Studies, shaping generations of the drummers on this site. A Berklee alumnus with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UM, he directs the Frost Funk/Fusion Ensemble, which has won a DownBeat Student Music Award every year since 2002, and created the RUCK Ensemble, an original hip-hop/funk group built around writing, arranging and recording together.
Steve is best known internationally for his years with the Bee Gees, from 1993 into 2001. He played the 1997 MGM Grand concert that became the five-million-selling One Night Only album and DVD, and the world tour that followed, from Wembley Stadium to the closing night at Sydney’s new Olympic Stadium. With the band he appeared on The Tonight Show, David Letterman, Oprah, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and the Royal Variety Performance, and he is a co-writer of the Bee Gees song “Voice in the Wilderness.”
After moving to Miami in 1976 he was voted Best Jazz Performer and Most Versatile Artist in South Florida polls, and helped shape the Miami jazz-fusion sound with the Ross–Levine Band, including That Summer Something (1981) with Pat Metheny. He has also played or recorded with Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan, Johnny Cash, Jaco Pastorius, Bo Diddley, Joe Sample, Bob James, Paquito D’Rivera and Randy Bernsen’s Ocean Sound Band, and toured nationally with Ben Vereen, including concerts with the Atlanta and Dallas symphony orchestras.
Since 2022 he has released a new original composition nearly every month, ranging from jazz, funk and fusion to Latin, cinematic and ambient music, with guests including Randy Bernsen, Mark Egan, John Daversa, Martin Bejerano and Charlie McCoy, and has discussed the work on WDNA 88.9 FM. He co-wrote Exercises in African-American Funk with former student Jonathan Joseph, has given clinics at PASIC, the Academy of Contemporary Music in England and Musicians Institute, and in 2025 received a Centennial Medal at the Frost School’s 100th-anniversary celebration, where he played alongside Pat Metheny and Will Lee.
