Bio:
Darryl is an American jazz bassist who has been living in France since 2004. Previously, he lived in New York for twelve years where he participated with some of the world’s greatest artists. He performs many genres of jazz and participates in a variety of projects with artists from the U.S. and Europe, traveling around the globe. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, birthplace to some of the world’s finest bassists including Stanley Clarke, Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson, Charles Fambrough, Percy Heath, Jymie Merritt, Christian Mcbride, Arthur Harper, Tyrone Brown, and Victor Bailey.
While in New York, Darryl performed with many jazz luminaries including Mulgrew Miller, Carmen Lundy, Hank Jones, Mary Stallings, Geri Allen, James Williams, Stefon Harris, Regina Carter, Ravi Coltrane, and Robert Glasper, among others. In 1996 he was the winner of the Thelonious Monk International Bass Competition. Living in France since 2004, he has performed with many European and American artists throughout Europe, including Martial Solal, Cedar Walton, Archie Shepp, George Cables, Harold Mabern, Donald Brown, Piero Odorici, Kirk Lightsey, Uri Caine, Dianne Reeves, Didier Lockwood, Christian Escoude, Baptiste Trotignon Florin Nicolescu, Ximo Tebar, Dado Moroni, Rosario Guiliani, Joe Locke, Willie Jones, Wayne Escoffery, Laurent de Wilde, Aldo Romano, and many more.
Predominantly self-taught, Darryl studied privately with pianist Gerald Price and bassist Tyrone Brown and studied composition at Manhattan School of Music. He learned early in life to appreciate many types of music. But he holds the strongest allegiance performing music of the African American diaspora: jazz, gospel, soul, and Latin. He also has a great love and knowledge of the music of Brazil. His versatility, soulfulness, openmindedness and professionalism have made him very much appreciated.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).