Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. (CD)

NEA Jazz Master Big Chief Donald Harrison’s recording “Congo Square Suite,” Movements I, II, and III, is his music and cultural perspective placed into a classical orchestral, tribal, and jazz paradigm. These elements include over forty years of working with hundreds of master innovators from every jazz era, many other African diaspora music styles, and European classical music. “Congo Square Suite” is a unique idea of epic musical proportions. It marks the only recording that combines an artist’s life experiences as an Afro-New Orleans Big Chief and master musician to compose, orchestrate, perform on, and produce. Its concept of music as a series of multiverses containing the same elements was the natural evolution for this artist. Harrison furthered this idea when he saw correlations between music and quantum theory. With “Congo Square Suite,” Harrison shows that his talent, experiences, and quantum realizations are the keys to understanding his intrinsic portals.