I am a two-time Emmy Award-winning composer, producer, and Juno Award-winning jazz pianist and educator. As a composer, I specialize in writing, arranging, and producing memorable, custom-made music for t.v., film & other media. I consider myself an "artistic problem solver": I strive to get to the essential conceptual truth of what the client is looking for - and to express it in a creative and supportive way. [READ MORE] or [BIO]

[6/13/2003] - Buffalo News review of Suite for New York

Jazz/D.D. Jackson, "Suite for New York" (Justin Time). One of the most eagerly awaited jazz records of the year - and one of the most important. Compositional ambition is alive and well in jazz, as is post-Coltrane, post-Cecil Taylor expressive energy. Obviously, after Sept. 11, the composer-pianist's original attempt to enter the rarified compositional sphere of Ellington, Mingus and George Russell had to be rewritten to include an entirely different sense of New York. Listen to the blistering "BQE" here (named for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), a little new century jazz classic. I wish some of the players had been more up to it but it seems to me in this one composition, Jackson has already leapfrogged over the entire compositional career, thus far, of Wynton Marsalis, Pulitzer Prize or no.

- Jeff Simon, Buffalo News