 |  | "Love and Cross-Cultural Struggles in Quebecite"
| | The family history of jazz pianist/ composer D.D. Jackson is rich with interracial romance, but not all of it hugs and kisses. "My grandmother threatened to kill herself with a knife if my mother, who was Chinese, married a black man," says the Ottawa-born musician from his New York pad. "But my mother was defiant, and she did marry him." No knives were drawn, but a long period of familial silence ensued. The saga has been dramatized, loosely, for Quebecite, a new jazz-opera composed by Jackson and scripted by G.G. award-winning poet George Elliott Clarke. The other troubled couple chronicled in the Quebec-set opera involves a half-Creole architect and an Indian-born student. "George really wanted to make a statement about inclusiveness in Canada," says Jackson. The ambitious project, a commission for the Guelph jazz fest and now on tour to Vancouver East Cultural Centre this weekend, involves a mostly Canadian, appropriately interracial cast including Jacksoul's Haydain Neale, Yoon Choi, Dean Bowman-the lone American here, of alt-rock act Screaming Headless Torsos-and Kiran Ahluwalia. Jackson leads a smokin' quintet Oct. 17-18 at 1895 Venables, 8 p.m. nightly, 604 872-5200. Relatedly, a panel chat on diversity happens 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16 at Library Square's Alice MacKay Theatre. | | Tom Zillich, the Westender, Oct/03 |
|
|
|
 |  |  | | | | | "D.D. Jackson is, at his best, the most inventive pianist under 50, dashing across the keyboard with preternatural speed yet never losing his classical grace and precision or his left-hand bluesy roots...."
-- - Fred Kaplan, The Absolute Sound
| | |
| | Suite for New York:
An impressive montage of controlled chaos, exciting solo work and promise of things to come: a febrile fusion of futuristic jazz, contemporary classical, streetwise funk and Afro-Cuban sensuality.
-- - Jazz Times Magazine
| | |
| | Quebecite:
"The score is a powerful, identifiably Jacksonesque effort full of energy, rhythm, and flourish..."
-- - Mark Miller, the Globe and Mail
| | |
| | Sigame:
"Swinging, immediate and risk-taking, Sigame is everything a great jazz album should be."
-- - Pulse magazine
| | |
| | "They should have called it "Stand Back, Here Comes D.D. Jackson." This passionate young Canadian pianist sounds like a state-of-the-art player piano exceeding the limits of human performance. "......So Far" is clearly a contender for jazz record of the year. Don't miss it."
-- Steve Guttenberg, Audio magazine
| | |
|
| | | |
|
|