Picture: Donald Harrison will play New York Metropolis’s City Corridor Thursday, Jan. 11. Picture courtesy of Osmany Torres / Supplied by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
Donald Harrison, the famed saxophonist and musician from New Orleans, is able to have some sonic enjoyable at New York Metropolis’s City Corridor. At a particular live performance, scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 11, Harrison will invite a lot of his well-respected pals on stage for a celebration known as Donald Harrison’s Music Omniverse. Viewers members can count on to listen to the artistic abilities of Dave Holland, Fred Wesley, Vernon Reid, DJ Logic, Arturo O’Farrill, Charles Tolliver, The Headhunters (Invoice Summers & Mike Clark) and Joe Dyson.
One of many themes for the night is Harrison’s distinctive model of music, which he first developed within the Nineteen Eighties, based on press notes. Greater than three many years in the past, he began to mix numerous musical types, fearlessly respecting all sorts of music by breaking down the boundaries amongst the style silos. This model is known as Nouveau Swing, and it incorporates parts of swing jazz, hip-hop, funk, soul and rock ‘n’ roll. Harrison, a “Huge Chief,” is a welcomer of everybody and each sort of sonic sound.
Right here’s how Harrison previewed the particular NYC live performance: “I’ll begin with my working band, with younger guys, Brian Richburg on drums, Dan Kaufman on piano and Noriatsu on bass, and we’re going to play a number of the Nouveau Swing music. That’s one thing I began within the late-’80s the place I used to be mixing trendy dance music with swinging jazz, so we began merging concepts from hip-hop, soul music, R&B, funk and New Orleans music, and rock ‘n’ roll and a bit little bit of classical all collectively into one model of music. And a Frenchman named it Nouveau Swing as a result of it was a brand new option to swing music as a result of I saved its swing factor in it, however I additionally added the dance issue to the music as a result of I got here from New Orleans.”
Harrison mentioned that one of many stipulations of making the Nouveau Swing sound is knowing the complete historical past of jazz, and that’s why Harrison is each a trainer and scholar. When he was turning into an internationally famend saxophonist, he discovered each period of jazz and even had the possibility to play with a number of the greats, an honorific that may be utilized to his personal title. He was born at a time when he might play jazz with musicians who had been improvising again within the Twenties, just a few many years after the artwork type was first created.
“I used to be in a position to merge all these experiences and what I like from dance music into one little ball, so that you’re going to listen to a few of that and the historical past of music,” he mentioned in a current telephone interview. “Then we’re going so as to add some quantum parts, culled from quantum principle. I’ve been engaged on quantum improvisation with a printed quantum theorist by the title of Stephon Alexander. We labored out one thing known as quantum improvisation. … We’re going to go to working with the older masters of the music and mixing up generations collectively, new generations with folks like Dave Holland and Charles Tolliver … the rock factor with Vernon Reid and the hip-hop factor with DJ Logic into a brand new shiny ball I’m calling ‘Omniverse’ music, which is the place I tie up a number of points of my life into one sound. It’s multi-genre music. It’s the place you’re taking one track, and also you play it in lots of genres after which combine all of them collectively into the Nouveau Swing style once more.”
This live performance will likely be a preview of Harrison’s upcoming recording efforts. Certainly one of them is known as The Magic Contact and options 9 totally different variations / genres of the identical track. Then, there’s The Artwork of Ardour, which takes one track and places it in three totally different types of music that mirror each other. The tune might begin within the style of swing jazz, after which it’ll morph into lure music, a subgenre of hip-hop.
“It actually developed after I was in highschool,” Harrison mentioned of those collaborations and connections in his musical oeuvre. “Two issues occurred. One was I learn the Charlie Parker assertion that should you don’t reside it, it gained’t come out of your horn, and that’s the rationale I went on a quest to play with each period of jazz musician. … And the opposite factor that occurred was I heard a combination of New Orleans conventional sounds that had been developed within the Eighteen Nineties with trendy jazz, and so in New York, I wrote a track after I was 19 known as ‘New York Second Line.’ That was an aha second, nevertheless it simply continued to evolve … in deeper methods the older I get and the extra experiences I get. So I’m very lucky that I used to be in the proper place on the proper time with the proper inquisitiveness from my mentor Charlie Parker’s assertion.”
Harrison added: “I believe the template that has proved to achieve success … is that [the legends] first mentored with an awesome artist earlier than them and collaborated with many different artists, and you’ll see that within the work of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Sidney Bechet and all these nice artists who performed with the earlier technology’s greats after which discovered their voice from that. I respect the concepts of others as a result of there’s no method I can know all the things. There’s no method anybody can know all the things, however I believe that the extra you be taught from different folks, the extra depth you’ll have in your music. … The obvious factor is that we deliver humanity collectively, and we respect one another’s concepts. We acknowledge one another’s concepts and discuss them and unfold the gospel of humanity.”
By John Soltes / Writer / [email protected]
Donald Harrison’s Music Omniverse will play Thursday, Jan. 11, at New York Metropolis’s City Corridor. Click on right here for extra info and tickets.