About Donald Harrison: 

National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master Big Chief Donald Harrison, a New Orleans native, is a versatile saxophonist and composer hailed by music legends like Eddie Palmieri and Nicholas Payton as a genius. His innovative contributions to jazz, soul, funk, and classical music have earned him recognition as a master musician of every era. In the HBO series Treme, director David Simon depicted Harrison’s musical innovations through two characters. Harrison acted and played music in Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme’s film Rachel Getting Married, Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke, and Marvel’s Luke Cage.

As the recognized Big Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans culture and a Chief in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa, Harrison’s influence spans continents. His extensive musical journey includes collaborations with jazz luminaries such as Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, and Ron Carter, among many others. Harrison’s contributions to jazz extend beyond performance. He pioneered four influential jazz styles, including the modern jazz take on the New Orleans second-line tradition, nouveau swing, quantum improvisation with quantum theorist  Dr. Stephon Alexander, and multi-genre singles.

In 2022, Harrison was honored with the prestigious NEA Jazz Master Award, recognizing his significant contributions to the genre. Harrison mentored diverse artists throughout his career, from The Notorious B.I.G. to Jon Batiste, Christian Scott, Trombone Shorty, and Esperanza Spalding. His exploration of music through the lens of quantum physics in the 2000s further expanded the boundaries of jazz, demonstrating his enduring commitment to innovation and creativity. His upcoming recording, “The Magic Touch,” showcases his multi-genre approach to music. It is one song played in nine different genres. The first eight styles are post-bop, blues, bossa nova, reggae, hip-hop, second-line, soul, and salsa are true to their styles. The ninth version mixes the first eight styles into a coalesced modern jazz style. It is an example of his nouveau swing style, which uses his experiences playing with jazz’s master innovators from every era to create his concepts.

About Larry Blumenfeld:

LARRY BLUMENFELD is Jazz Curator for Spoleto Festival USA. He has written regularly about music and culture for The Wall Street Journal since 2004. His work has also appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, New Orleans Times Picayune, Daily Beast, NPR, Salon and TIDAL, among other publications and websites. His criticism focuses on jazz, Afro Latin and Creative music. His reporting often centers on connections between these cultures and issues of social justice. He was the 2019 Jeanette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University. He has twice received the Jazz Journalists Association’s Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Writing, as well as an Open Society Institute Katrina Media Fellowship (researching cultural recovery in post-flood New Orleans) and a National Arts Journalism Fellow at Columbia University. His writing about New Orleans has appeared in the essay collections, “Pop When the World Falls Apart” (EMP/Duke University Press) and “Best Music Writing, 2008” (Da Capo Press). His essay “Exploding Myths in Morocco and Senegal” appeared in “Music in the Post-9/11 World” (Routledge Press). He programs and hosts the long-running series “Jazz and Social Justice,” at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem; is Editorial Director for Chamber Music America and editor-at-large of Jazziz magazine. He curates the Deer Isle Jazz Festival in Stonington, Maine, which he cofounded in 2001. He lives, writes and plays basketball in Brooklyn, NY.