D.D. Jackson via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from D.D. Jackson:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: D.D. Jackson
- City: Maplewood, New Jersey
- Country: United States
My Life & Work
-
Bio:
After receiving his B.Music with High Distinction in Classical Piano from Indiana University, and his Masters in Jazz from the Manhattan School of Music, the two-time Emmy-winning composer D.D. Jackson began his career as a jazz pianist/composer, and went on to record, perform, and tour around the world with some of the most acclaimed names in jazz and beyond, including drummer Jack Dejohnette, and saxophonists James Carter and David Murray (with whom he recently completed a week at New York's historic Village Vanguard). He also has collaborated frequently with Questlove and "The Roots”, most recently appearing with them on piano at the theater of Madison Square Garden for the John Lennon 75th Birthday Concert, at Radio City Music Hall (for which he also wrote 30-piece orchestral arrangements), and as an arranger/producer/pianist on their last 2 CD’s.
Jackson has also recorded 12 jazz CD's as leader or co-leader (including 2 for the major label BMG) featuring his original compositions, ranging from his Juno Award-winning solo piano CD “...so far”, to his larger-scale meditation on the events of 9/11 entitled “Suite for New York”; and two operas, including "Quebecite”[pronounced “KAY-beh-SEE-tay”] (based in part on his African-American father and Chinese mother), and “Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path” (about the father of Canada’s current leader, Justin Trudeau), both written with librettist George Elliott Clarke (the recently-appointed "Poet Laureate of Canada").
Jackson has also been successfully composing music for television, film and other media for the past several years, in 2019 receiving his second Emmy Award, for Outstanding Original Song (with lyricist Billy Aronson), and his first Emmy in 2016 for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition, among his 5 total Emmy nominations (all for his writing on the PBS show “Peg + Cat” ). He has also written regularly for both "The Wonder Pets" (Nickelodeon) (which won 4 consecutive Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Direction and Composition), Esme & Roy (HBO/Sesame Workshop), and several other shows, and has done numerous commissions, most recently for The Ahn Trio and The Metropolis Ensemble. He is also doing increasing work for film, with the romantic comedy feature "You & Me" (for which Jackson wrote the score and collaborated on the songs with lyricist/director/co-writer Alexander Baack), recently winning the 2018 Cinequest Film Festival Audience Award for best comedy feature. As a writer, Jackson has also penned articles for such publications as the Village Voice and DownBeat magazine (for which he maintained a popular column on his experiences as a jazz musician entitled "Living Jazz”, for 5 years).
As an educator, Jackson is currently on faculty at Brooklyn College where he directs the Global Jazz Masters program, and also teaches Media Scoring in their Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. He previously taught part-time at Hunter College for over 9 years, ultimately receiving the Hunter College Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. Previously, Jackson was also Chair of Jazz and Contemporary Studies at the Harlem School of the Arts (where his past students included 15-year-old prodigy and Hammond and Yamaha Artist Matthew Whitaker, and recent "The Voice" finalist We' McDonald).
Jackson lives in Maplewood, NJ (just outside of New York City) with his wife Elizabeth, their 12-year old son Jarrett and 10-year old daughter Aria.
Contact Information
- Email: dd@ddjackson.com
- Telephone: 646-250-3132
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://ddjackson.bandcamp.com
- ▶ Twitter: ddjack
- ▶ Website: http://www.ddjackson.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ddlivingjazz
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UC_EAsvhyda2gfC_WRUfAmfw
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/1gWO7ila6UMQ2yYMikCYZM
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/24Bds1P1bOo64FMY32vL6z
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/2l3770qV33FiUUbo38CEYq
- ▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/3YG7RZoTmIHJca7s35Nh6U
- ▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/3nXdivZPVnPLBCUnmlDth6
- ▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/6l2tFkiBUro1ytpVT9Zdyr
- ▶ Column: http://www.ddjackson.com/living-jazz-column
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
