D.D. Jackson

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]

performing/recording a CD of the music of Don Pullen with the Virginia Tech Jazz Ensemble

November 18, 2014  /  D.D. Jackson

Really delighted to be spending a few days at Virginia Tech near my former teacher Don Pullen's home town of Roanoke, Virginia, and to be taking part in a fascinating Don Pullen project. Jason Crafton, a professor here and the director of their Jazz Ensembles, has actually commissioned several people to do big band arrangements of several of Don's pieces, including "Big Alice", "Saturday Night in the Cosmos", "Resting on the Road", "1529 Gunn Street", and a solo piano version I'll be doing of his beautiful composition "Ode to Life". Not only will we be performing the material live tonight (with myself sitting in on piano) at the Moss Arts Center in Blacksburg, but I also participated in an actual CD recording of this and other Don Pullen material he's putting together with his students - truly a labor of love, but also something that I think will ultimately cause Don's incredible compositional abilities to come to the attention of more and more people, which is always a good thing :)...

I also got a chance to look at a portion of the documentary "Jazz Dancing" (some of which they'll be playing tonight), which covers that whole tumultuous period when Don was working on his last, great project - Earth Eagle First Circle (a collaboration between his African Brazilian Connection, the Chief Cliff Singers, and the Garth Fagan Dance Company). It was like looking into a time capsule, seeing so many familiar faces on film from the 90's (since I was brought in towards the end to sub for him when he was too sick to perform)...