CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Derrick Hodge
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
Two-time Grammy Award-winning bassist and Blue Note Recording Artist Derrick Hodge grew up right outside of Philadelphia in Willingboro, N.J. Within his formative years, Hodge pursued multiple styles of music as early as 7 years old ranging from gospel music to jazz and orchestral music, continuing his formal music education at Temple University, where he studied Jazz Composition and Performance. While attending Temple, Hodge uniquely became the first jazz major to participate in the Temple University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Luis Biava and New Music Chamber Orchestra.
During this influential time, Hodge began to show his colors as a “Renaissance” musician, with incredible diversity in musical tastes and abilities. Hodge played with such Philly Jazz greats as tenor saxophonist Bootsie Barnes and trumpeter Terrell Stafford, meanwhile reaping considerable session work with some of Philly’s finest modern R&B artists such as Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Floetry, and DJ Jazzy Jeff.
Throughout his early career, Hodge continued to show an adept proficiency and broad ability across numerous musical genres, and platforms. Ranging from orchestrations with Common and Kanye West for Common’s album Be, (which reached Billboard No.1) and production work on Common’s Finding Forever to winning R&B Grammys in 2012 and 2014 with the Robert Glasper Experiment as a founding member of the group. Hodge has always been held with the highest respect of his peers which led to roles such as the Musical Director for Maxwell for nearly a decade, continued work as a producer and writer for numerous albums, including co-producing Justin Kauflin’s album “Coming Home” with Quincy Jones, and several Blue Note projects along side Don Was, all while maintaining his solo projects and touring.
Hodge has performed, written and/or recorded with artists such as Maxwell, Kanye West. Herbie Hancock, Q-Tip, Mos Def, Timbaland, Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Gerald Levert, Common, Bilal, Lupe Fiasco, Andre 3000, Sade, Terence Blanchard, Ledisi, Terell Stafford, Donald Byrd, Stefon Harris, Bootsie Barnes, Kirk Franklin, Kenny Lattimore, Donnie McClurkin, and many more.
As a Blue Note Recording Artist Hodge has released two solo projects under the label, The Second (2016) and Live Today (2013), both albums being a rich, raw and revelatory artistic statement, having accessibility in mind to ensure that melodies soar and rhythms bump.
His writing and arranging accomplishments straddle both the recording and live arenas, from composing original music for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, to arranging for Nas and the National Symphony Orchestra, as well as composing the original work “Infinite Reflections” for the Chicago Brass Ensemble, and being a Sundance Composer Fellow.
He has also directed and scored other projects from being co-Musical Director for the 2015 Triumph Awards and arranging strings for Mos Def’s 2008 premiere at Carnegie Hall, to writing for films such as Back to School Mom, the 180 Days Documentary Series, Land of Opportunity, Black Candle, The Army Recruiter and Uneasy Listening. Early film work includes When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts in which he did additional writing and scoring, as well as Who the $%@ Is Jackson Pollock?, and Faubourg Treme: A Story of Black New Orleans.
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil and positioning creators around the world within reach of each other and the entire planet is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram).
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a brilliant sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
Human society, the billions of us in all the complexity of our relationships, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world, neural structures in artificial intelligence are small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible. In a matrix they can be created.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX