Best Jazz Albums of the Year List — ranked #2

After releasing 13 wonderful albums up to 2007 before becoming disillusioned with major labels, D.D. Jackson left Canada for New York. There he established a career composing and arranging for various television shows, winning a number of Emmys in the process. He also performed off and on with the band the Roots and has been an educator at several institutions.

Many have been waiting for Jackson’s full return to jazz, and this project delivers wonderfully. During COVID, Canada’s former poet laureate George Elliott Clarke began a process to commission composers to write songs based on the poetry of a series of Canadian poets. From the curated poems sent to Jackson, he chose the one from each poet he believed would best lend itself to song. On various tracks they include eight vocalists, saxophonists Kelly Jefferson and Jane Bunnett, as well as a string quartet and even the Czech National Symphony Orchestra.

This is an ambitious, complex and stunning album with an amazing attention to detail. The compositions are varied and fitting for the chosen poems. The album requires several listens, as the full meaning of the words grows each time through.

Jackson’s playing is fabulous with melodic beauty and his familiar chord clusters driving the narrative. His singing on the poem by Giovanna Riccio, Daedalus’ Lament, is outstanding. The opening track, Mavety Street, is a beautiful entrée, leading to swinging and often dissonant tracks, including the wild scat-laden Daylight Shooting in Little Italy.

From the intensity of The Father’s Dream to the funky blues of 2641 Fuller Terrace, there is an almost overwhelming depth of meaning and focus. Poetry and jazz in perfect harmony.

It has been hinted that this project is in a way a progress report on the totality of Jackson’s career to date. Whatever the case, a heartfelt welcome back D.D.

— The Winnipeg Free Press

“As this drama moves from the intimately personal to the global doomscroll of alienation, dislocation, migration and war, Jackson tightens the screws then explodes into a piano solo of tragic grandeur. If you want to compare this staggering performance to the songs of the Armenian composer Komitas or to Shostakovich’s settings of Tsvetayeva, you’ll get no argument from this corner.”

— John Chacona, All About Jazz

Composer DD Jackson comes up with a brilliantly ambitious project, playing a variety of keyboards while accompanied by a core team of Larnell Lewis/dr, George Koller–Rich Brown/b and Tom Fleming/g while mixing and matching a wide variety of guests, including Jane Bunnett/ss, various reeds, a string quartet and even the Czech National Symphony Orchestra.

But that’s just the beginning — he then brings on a wide range of Canadian poets to recite and/or sing the lyrics to the baker’s dozen of songs, with the result a Whitman’s Sampler of delicious bon mots. For instance Al Moritz delivers a hip blues rocker akin to Steely Dan on “Coda: The Blues” while Ayesha Chatterjee brings some soul to a similarly inspired “On Silence.” Is he going to bring all the singers on tour? I hope so, and I’m ready!

— George W. Harris, Jazz Weekly

This ambitious and highly successful project is the work of Canadian jazz pianist/composer/producer D.D. Jackson… This is a stunningly beautiful and effective “patchwork” album, an essential curiosity that we wholeheartedly recommend!

— Thierry De Clemensat, Paris Move

A feature article about D.D. Jackson and his daughter both releasing albums.

— Essex News Daily

The Kanata-raised, New Jersey-based pianist D.D. Jackson can blame his resurgent interest in jazz on two people — an old colleague and a new president.

The Juno-winning recording artist is also an Emmy-winning composer who has crafted music for the children’s TV shows Peg + Cat and The Wonder Pets, among other projects. “After settling down and raising our two kids, I found myself wanting to be more in one place and to challenge myself in new creative directions, and writing for t.v. and media has filled the role perfectly for the past several years,” says Jackson, 50.

However, Jackson recently moved jazz back to the front burner. One reason is the return to New York, after two decades in Paris, of tenor saxophonist David Murray, with whom Jackson began playing in the early 1990s.

Last week, Jackson played in Murray’s band at New York’s legendary Village Vanguard jazz club, and critic Fred Kaplan wrote of Jackson at stereophile.com: “He’s lost none of his brilliance, whether mad-dashing across the keyboard, comping with deep lyricism, or…well, anything the occasion demands. I hope Murray’s return means Jackson’s as well.”

Jackson’s other spur for playing jazz is Donald Trump, who has energized the pianist to protest through music. Jackson, who will return to Ottawa May 18 and 19 for his first hometown performances in nearly 10 years, elaborates below.

Q: Tell me about your connection with David Murray.

David was one of my earliest mentors. I was first introduced to him by another great mentor of mine, the former Charles Mingus pianist Don Pullen, for whom I subbed on a crazy all-star tour organized by producer Kip Hanrahan in the early ’90s that included David on sax, as well as Little Jimmy Scott, violinist Billy Bang, and even Jack Bruce from the rock group Cream. Following the tour, David’s group came to play at the Village Vanguard and I could only get the nerve to ask if I could sit in after the last set of the week. He said, “Sure, any time!” and so I ended up having to wait another full year and a half until he came back to finally actually do so.

It thankfully went well, and I ended up playing with him shortly after at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, which no doubt helped lead to my signing to Justin Time Records for many years, with David appearing on my first CD for them. I went on to play actively as his pianist in various groups until I started to do more of my own activities as leader.

Q: How has Donald Trump’s election prompted an artistic response from you?

Trump’s election has unleashed in me such a sense of frustration, anger, opposition, and just a general wash of emotion, that it’s also awakened in me an increasing need to express myself artistically as directly and meaningfully as I can, as a sort of catharsis.

So it was really the combination of David Murray calling and my frustrations with Trump that inspired me creatively to sit down and write a series of new tunes that will form the basis of a new CD I have planned. One of them is entitled D.F.T. I’ll let you figure out what that stands for!

Q: Have you given any thought to moving back to Canada?

Yes, I’ve definitely occasionally flirted with the idea of returning, should the right opportunity arise — in fact, probably most intensely right after Trump’s election. It’s challenging, though, having settled in the New York City region with my family, and considering the various ties I’ve acquired in this area over time, including to the jazz community. Having said that, one can never say never, and Trudeau is looking pretty good comparatively as a leader. I actually wrote an opera with George Elliott Clarke about his dad [Pierre Trudeau] a few years ago.

— Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen

This week will be a homecoming for Juno-winning pianist D.D. Jackson – back to the Ottawa student music festivals where he made his first public performances, and back to playing with a long-time musical friend.

OttawaJazzScene.ca: When did you know for sure that you wanted to take a more creative approach to music?

Jackson: I actually can trace it to a music camp that I went to in Magog, Quebec, the summer after my first year in college… I was feeling a tremendous lack of freedom, and wanting to be more expressive. So I went to this music camp and spent a whole summer just playing my own music… that was really where I realized it was something that maybe I had some sort of talent for.

— Alayne McGregor, OttawaJazzScene.ca

“He’s lost none of his brilliance, whether mad-dashing across the keyboard (he was an acolyte of Don Pullen, whose legacy he embodies with fine flair), comping with deep lyricism, or…well, anything the occasion demands. I hope Murray’s return means Jackson’s as well.”

— Fred Kaplan, Stereophile

Conundrum, provocation, history lesson, ritual, chamber recital, jazz concert, elegy — the Roots’ performance at the Public Theater on Tuesday night was decidedly not a standard kickoff for a hip-hop album.

The musicians weren’t the same Roots band seen regularly on NBC’s “Tonight” show with Jimmy Fallon. They included the Metropolis Ensemble — the conductor Andrew Cyr, a string quartet and four singers — and D.D. Jackson on keyboards.

It was a miscellany of grim tidings and stubborn determination, of sounds both earthy and avant-garde, of bitter realities and electronic hallucinations.

— The New York Times

Before her death in 1995, Lillian Liu, the mother of Ottawa-born jazz pianist D.D. Jackson, dictated details of her life into a tape recorder. Jackson’s father, Richard Jackson, transcribed the tapes into 21 pages of memories.

Those pages might have been condemned to a trunk of family heirlooms were it not for a chance phone conversation between D.D. Jackson and Ajay Heble, artistic director of the Guelph Jazz Festival.

“I had called him just to do a gig,” recalls Jackson, on the phone from his home in Brooklyn. “He had this grand notion of a jazz opera, and suggested I collaborate with George Elliott Clarke.”

With commission in hand, Jackson used his father’s transcripts to shape an opera about a Canadian interracial couple, based on the real experiences of his parents.

— Marke Andrews, Vancouver Sun

Pianist-composer D.D. Jackson continues to craft diversely sourced, delightfully inventive music as he returns to his longtime Canadian label Justin Time for this outstanding trio set where he’s backed by the dazzling Cuban-born drummer Dafnis Prieto and bassist Ugonna Okegwo.

Opening track “The Welcoming,” a soulful, gospelized melody with a kinetic swing, frames Jackson’s improvisations, which are always cannily constructed, with a creative edge of unpredictability.

— DownBeat

A serene D.D. Jackson? I don’t think so. Compared to what? Compared to his former self, before his recent matrimony and home-ownership, he may indeed feel serene. Compared to smooth jazz musicians, for example, Jackson’s playing is veritably volcanic.

That is to say, Jackson has lost none of his force. Never fear that. The synapses still crackle with current measured in high-powered kilovolts.

Serenity Song, D.D. Jackson’s seventh Justin-Time album, makes evident the progress of his growth. The expanse of his musical interests, uncontainable on even a series of albums, hints that even more stunning surprises await.

— All Music Guide

A young fan who emailed one of Canada’s top musicians for tips on how to make the big time was astonished to find himself featuring on the star’s website. Aspiring young jazz pianist David Cowling, 15, of Staveley, also received a personal reply from his hero, critically acclaimed composer DD Jackson, on whom he is basing his GCSE music coursework.

— The Westmorland Gazette (England)

TORONTO (CP) — Pierre Elliott Trudeau has been the subject of biographies, essays and TV specials — and coming soon, an opera.

“He has a life full of incidents, not to mention a prime ministership that was full of events and surprises,” said Canadian author George Elliott Clarke, who’s putting the finishing touches on a five-act opera about the late statesman.

Clarke, a Governor General’s Award-winning poet, is writing the opera’s libretto, and jazz composer D.D. Jackson is producing the score.

— Carlye Malchuk, Maclean’s

[4 stars] This ambitious CD is much more than a tribute to The City, post 9-11. It is a grand evocation of the joys, mystery, and pain of life there, and Ottawa-born pianist-composer D.D. Jackson has succeeded admirably in conveying the energy, the ever-present danger and the beauty of the place.

— Montreal Gazette

Jackson’s ambitious suite of music for the ‘heroism and resilience of New Yorkers,’ is a bold, often sprawling musical canvas utilising his own and the solo talents of Spaulding, Turner, Walsh and Motian to great effect.

Most moving and reaching a new level of intensity is the final invocation Towers Of Light, a heartfelt requiem for the events of September 11, 2001. Written, arranged and conducted by Jackson, this is an imposing body of work.

— Derek Ansell, Jazz Journalists International

New York City has inspired many a jazz portrait. In the wake from the towers’ collapse any tribute bears tragedy, but Canadian pianist/composer D.D. Jackson’s suite for his adopted home — a strange territory of beauty and peril — is a compelling and deeply felt work.

— Randal McIlroy, Coda

Everything about this project is cinematic. As with most of D.D. Jackson’s earlier CDs, he thinks visually. Steeped in classical music, the 36-year-old, Canadian-born pianist-composer-arranger-producer has tackled larger and larger projects with each successive album.

Apparently incapable of thinking small (Jackson recently completed a jazz opera), his Suite for New York is well over an hour of painting his adoptive city with broad strokes, capturing its sights, sounds and emotions.

— Harvey Siders, Jazz Times

[4 stars] Everyone from a small city — even a national capital like Canada’s Ottawa — has a powerful reaction to New York. Some are awed by its size and freneticism and retreat; others embrace it and never leave.

This is new ground for Jackson, who has worked mostly in solo or trio settings, and he pursues several approaches to arranging his nonet.

— James Hale, DownBeat

For an opera, Québécité has got a lot going for it: it’s sung in a language most of us speak; it’s about an issue that will touch many of us at some point in our lives; and its score is based in the vernacular tradition of jazz, gospel, and rhythm & blues.

“There are elements in Québécité that are more experimental, but on the whole I would say it tends to be fairly accessible,” says the Ottawa-born Jackson, on the line from Brooklyn.

— Alexander Varty, The Georgia Straight

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 is Chinese, married my father, who is Black.”

— Tom Zillich, The Westender

D.D. Jackson’s ambitious tableau of New York — “a collective group meditation on the events of 9/11” — pays tribute to New Yorkers’ heroism and spirit of resilience through a sweeping suite for nine musicians.

— Toronto Star

New York has stimulated songwriters for eons, regardless of the musical genre they frequent. The grandeur and diversity of Manhattan and its environs are fascinating, which makes it a natural inspiration for composers of all stripes.

Jackson employs a nonet of international musicians to convey his message. Jackson’s suite elicits vibrant images of street life and astutely relays the pace that seemingly never drops off. It is a solid effort effectively balancing splendid arrangements with impressive improvisations.

— Frank Rubulino, All About Jazz

Pianist-composer D.D. Jackson continues to craft diversely sourced, delightfully inventive music as he returns to his longtime Canadian label Justin Time for this outstanding trio set where he’s backed by the dazzling Cuban-born drummer Dafnis Prieto and bassist Ugonna Okegwo.

Opening track “The Welcoming,” a soulful, gospelized melody with a kinetic swing, frames Jackson’s improvisations, which are always cannily constructed, with a creative edge of unpredictability.

Some of Jackson’s classical training seems at play on “For Desdemona,” a fragile, reserved beauty that features his trinkling, virtuoso runs against its poignant changes.

— DownBeat

New to me was D.D. Jackson: a Juno Award-winning Canadian jazz composer and pianist who wowed the audience with a spiky improvisation on a Scott Joplin rag, then switched to the Hammond B3 to perform his arrangement of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain, taking flight on the organ while the Metropolis players tried to keep up.

— Feast of Music

Another searching, groove-rooted set, led by drummer/percussionist Kahil El’Zabar, constituted one of the evening’s high points. Here was a band, dubbed Le Funk à Vanguard, built to headline a night at the Vision Festival: Along with El’Zabar, there was guitarist Kelvyn Bell, saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, trombonist Craig Harris, pianist D.D. Jackson and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma. This was the old-school avant-garde at its blues-soaked best, vamping, chanting, soloing, burning and following El’Zabar’s kalimba groove toward bliss.

— Jazz Times

The Roots …and then you shoot your cousin (Def Jam Records) — “The Roots re-establish their position as not only just one of the most important acts in hip-hop, but also as one of the more provocative, using their style of dour live jazz, heavily crafted around D.D. Jackson’s emotive piano melodies.”

— Top 100 Albums of 2014

There was a palpable sense of anticipation before Milford Graves’ set. The veteran drummer and educator hadn’t played the Vision Festival for five years and doesn’t have too many gigs in New York City, and this was to be the premiere of his new quartet, featuring pianist D.D. Jackson. Having studied with the great Don Pullen, Jackson’s inclusion immediately brought to mind those classic early sides Graves recorded with Pullen on the long out of print Nommo (SRP, 1966). Anyone with an inkling of how they sounded would not have been disappointed with the wall of sound barrage which awaited.

Graves is something of a showman, even carrying band members around on his shoulders in previous performances. Tonight they all remained tied by the force of gravity, and the drummer’s theatricality was restricted to his entrance. On a home-made talking drum, Graves began in the wings, before circling the stage as he played until concluding with a puckish “Good Evening.”

After positioning himself behind his customized kit he launched a tumultuous pounding, speaking in self-invented tongues in accompaniment. Jackson slipped onstage and began beating the hell out of his piano, with Graves looking delighted. Jackson rocked backwards and forwards as he assaulted the piano in a display of amazing high energy playing. Graves summoned first William Parker to leap into the fray, then tenor saxophonist Grant Langford for a veritable wall of sound.

Graves leavened his ferocious power with a distinctive timbral palette courtesy of his customized kit, but he also demonstrated an uncanny ability to maintain separate rhythms on different parts of his kit, so at times it sounded as if there were at least two drummers involved. Though the group generally operated at flat out intensity, it was like a spicy meal where you can still taste the full range of flavors once you get used to the heat, with shifting patterns revealing themselves to the discerning listener within the overall tumult.

Parker’s approach was similar to his tactic with Cecil Taylor, a flow of constantly changing propulsive patterns. Graves took time out to talk about the three generations of musicians in the band, with Langford the youngest member, and how musicians from the 1950s and ’60s could be a timely inspiration to the younger generation in showing that you can do it for yourselves.

Langford held his own without overpowering, building with short gobbets of overblown sound, trading licks with Jackson and even finding space for more delicate whinnies. Jackson clearly relished the challenge to ensure he was heard, supplementing his strong runs with block chords, flats of hands and elbows as necessary to get his point over. A wonderful rousing set and yet another well-merited standing ovation.

— John Sharpe, All About Jazz

Writer George Elliott Clarke’s poem formed the basis of a modern opera about former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The Barrie Advance spoke with Clarke while he was in Banff. Winner of the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, Clarke is the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. He spent two years working on the dramatic poem about Trudeau, which was originally composed as the libretto for the opera. It received enthusiastic reviews for its workshop debut at Toronto’s Harbourfront in April.

A special engagement in Barrie will offer a sampling of five songs and a glimpse into the life of one of our nation’s most controversial leaders. The life and character of Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a natural dramatic candidate for a modern-day opera.

Clarke and Jackson previously collaborated on the jazz opera, Québécité, in 2003. Both admired the real-life Trudeau and have worked with libretto and music to capture a complex man, complete with gifts and flaws in the context of a dramatic stage life.

“As a Canadian figure, who else is there really who combines all those elements of charisma, intellectuality, sportsmanship, athleticism, as well as looking good on television and being a constitutional scholar?” he said.

— The Barrie Advance

Open-minded. Experimental. Not many people would use those words to describe opera. But jazz pianist-composer D.D. Jackson does. And when he explains what he means, it’s hard not to agree. Unlike musical theatre — which, as the composer of the off-Broadway hit, Mytholojazz, he also knows something about — opera, he says, doesn’t demand “everything be completely clear and explained to you from the beginning.” That may make jazz and opera perfect soulmates.

That’s what Guelph Jazz Festival organizers are banking on when they premiere the jazz-opera Québécité, on Sept. 5. They’re also counting on the sheer amount of talent behind it: ever-provocative artistic director Ajay Heble commissioned the production for the festival’s 10th anniversary; Governor General’s Award-winning poet George Elliott Clarke penned the words; a stellar lineup of jazz, gospel, Punjabi-folk and R&B/acid jazz musicians will bring it to life; and the Ottawa-born, New York City-based Jackson wrote the music.

Like the Guelph, Ont., festival itself, Jackson, 36, knows how to push the limits of jazz. He’s worked the avant-garde scene with the likes of violinist Billy Bang and tenor-sax man David Murray, and written a sweeping jazz-orchestral arrangement for his latest CD, Suite for New York.

“There’s always been a melodic bent in my music,” he says. “I can’t help myself.” And be it jazz or opera, who can resist a good tune?

— Sue Ferguson, Maclean’s Magazine

D.D. Jackson had a distinctive means of busting free from authority during his years as an undergraduate at Indiana University in Bloomington. He spent most of his time training to become a classical pianist. He learned to master the complex creations of Mozart, Beethoven and Shostakovich. Yet he yearned to break free from the shackles. He yearned to play jazz.

“My form of rebellion was to sneak a few minutes on the piano to play off the top of my head,” Jackson says from his home in New York City.

When Jackson applied for graduate school at the Manhattan School of Music, he first sought to continue his training as a classical musician. Then, “on a whim,” he says, he also applied as a jazz major. He was accepted into both programs, forcing a decision. He stepped away from the classical realm. And chose jazz.

“It should be fun,” Jackson says of Friday’s jazz trio show. “I call Ugonna and Victor groove meisters. They have such perfect rhythm, and we’ll be choosing tunes from my repertoire that have a bit more groove to them.”

— The Post-Standard (Syracuse)

Pianist D.D. Jackson loves to prance across the keyboard like a Mikhail Baryshnikov soaring to a far-off beloved. The Ottawa-born, classically trained virtuoso likes to punctuate rather than decorate. But he also roams tenderly into the celestial spaces on a ballad, which he accents with a decidedly percussive style.

Jackson, 35, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is a man of restless talent who studied with Menahem Pressler at the University of Indiana before turning to jazz with the late Jaki Byard.

Listening to his last CD, the highly praised Sigame (on Justin Time Records), you hear Jackson delve into a gamut of styles, from groove-oriented pieces and Spanish-flavoured tunes to pieces highlighted by Don Pullen-like clusters. With Ugonna Okegwo on bass and Dafnis Prieto on drums and percussion, Jackson finds plenty of opportunity to add layers of rhythm by playing off his sidemen as he improvises around his own melodies.

“It’s just my nature. I’m always trying to do something different in each project and hope that it’s all funneled through my musical sensibility,” he said this week from his Brooklyn home.

— Irwin Block, Montreal Gazette

D.D. Jackson has never been one for typecasting. Beginning in the classical realm, earning a bachelor of music degree with high distinction in classical piano from the prestigious University of Indiana in 1989, Jackson found himself gravitating toward jazz as he finished his degree.

“The studio I was in was anti-jazz and I found it quite oppressive. I felt that I was chased into jazz in a way. I grew up doing mostly classical, but found that improvisation was more of an outlet for me.”

“It’s a matter of finding the medium that you can best express yourself with. I don’t even consider myself a pianist anymore. I like to consider myself more of a conceptualist — someone who has his fingers in many different areas of musical expression and who approaches his work with an open, creative mind.”

This attitude has led him on quite an adventure. Since finishing his master’s degree in jazz in 1991 at the Manhattan School of Music — where he studied with Jaki Byard and Don Pullen — Jackson has travelled the world.

— The Charlatan

In one way, pianist D.D. Jackson has come home. No, he hasn’t moved back to Ottawa from New York, although Jackson maintains that will happen some day. He has returned to Canadian label Justin Time, which launched the 35-year-old dynamo’s career more than a decade ago.

His latest release, Sigame, was released by Justin Time after Jackson put out two recordings with major label RCA/BMG. The big-label experience was not the most fruitful, although Jackson does not regret making a stab at it.

“People come to the big city, New York, with that sort of goal lingering in the back of their mind. There’s a naive presumption that the major-label route leads to greater career success and notoriety. What I realized was that it really wasn’t that different, and there was much, much less focus on me as a musician, an individual artist. There was much more focus on the music as a marketable quality, which jazz often is not unless you make serious compromises.”

— The Ottawa Citizen

“…Opening with ‘The Welcoming,’ Jackson and his trio hit their mark with a wallop, unhindered by a testy sound system and a noisy house that obviously included folks who weren’t there to listen to jazz. Particularly sublime was ‘Hopes and Dreams,’ a piece from Jackson’s upcoming album which will serve to pay homage to New York City.

After the tune’s heartfelt opening gambit, a straight eighth groove kicked up the tempo for a rollicking journey that contained elements of stride and funk. If there’s a more complete pianist than Jackson on the current scene, I’m certainly unaware of him or her.

In town for his own performance that week, David Murray took out his horn to sit in for his own ‘Peace Song.’ It was an electric moment that confirmed the strong stylistic bonds between the saxophonist and Jackson. Rounding out a solid hour of music, the group closed with the bucolic strains of ‘Summer,’ one of Jackson’s best pieces.”

— Chris Hovan, All About Jazz

Pianist-composer D.D. Jackson continues to craft diversely sourced, delightfully inventive music as he returns to his longtime Canadian label Justin Time for this outstanding trio set where he’s backed by bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Dafnis Prieto (with guests Freddie Bryant on guitar and Christian Howes on violin).

Opening track “The Welcoming,” a soulful, gospelized melody with a kinetic swing, frames Jackson’s improvisations, which are always cannily constructed, with a creative edge of unpredictability. On “Cubano-Funk,” an avant-garde opening of scrambled piano lines and random rhythm bears down into a driving beat, with Jackson’s dynamic left hand pushing along a piston-like figure.

“Le Shuffle,” a ’60s-styled soul-funk groove, is punctuated with a gorgeous seamless statement against a percolating rhythm section, Bryant’s whanging guitar chords, and Jackson’s tonal blizzards. Some of Jackson’s classical training seems at play on “For Desdemona,” a fragile, reserved beauty that features his trinkling, virtuoso runs against its poignant changes.

Of course, concluding an album with a track called “Prologue” might seem to be an inversion of sorts. Or it could also be seen as a suggestion that D.D. Jackson sees renewal in his already astonishing career.

— Drew Wheeler, CDNOW Senior Editor

The title of D.D. Jackson’s new disc is a bit of a hopeful misnomer, as any listener of the extraordinary 39-year-old jazz pianist well knows. You’re not going to find 64 minutes of music on any disc whatsoever in Jackson’s name without a good, healthy controlled swatch of tone clusters and splatter piano. He’s in the Jaki Byard/Don Pullen line of jazz pianists, which means that no matter how much Jackson might want to make a “tuneful and conceptually truly open” disc of music devoted to his marital bliss with wife Elizabeth, there will be moments when Cecil Taylor’s way of detonating the piano’s percussive explosions can’t help coming to the fore. And it also means that a saxophonist as fine as Sam Newsome is going to follow suit and play terrific inside/outside games with the chord changes of Jackson’s tunes.

There’s a lot of fine music on “Serenity Song,” much of it as lovely and suggestive of connubial bliss as Jackson wanted it to be. But that doesn’t mean he’ll ignore the rest of what made him what he is — Byard’s and Pullen’s employer Charles Mingus, collaborations with Taiwanese violinists and Cuban drummers, enough political concern to dedicate one song to the memory of Hurricane Katrina victims. He’s one of the great jazz pianists in a crowded current field.

— Buffalo News, 4 August 2006

This album quickly establishes itself and the work of pianist D.D. Jackson. The first two pieces move from “Chi-Pini’s Song,” a gentle waltz, to “Etude,” an angular bit of new-bop. The first features violinist Christian Howes while the second is a standout for the pianist. These two pieces quickly set up the energy that fills this album.

The disc is loaded with great play from Jackson, Howes, sax player Sam Newsome and drummer Dafnis Prieto. But maybe the strongest element is Jackson’s composition. The 11 songs range from nicely swinging waltzes, such as the opener and “Taiwan Moments,” to the hard-driving “Three Shades of Mingus.”

Standing almost on its own is the lovely “Love Theme from Quebecite,” from Jackson’s jazz opera. It features lovely cello work from Dana Leong, who also plays trombone on the Mingus tune.

— Bob Karlovits, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Sept. 17, 2006

A new Canadian opera will focus on an iconic figure in Canadian politics and history — Pierre Elliott Trudeau. George Elliott Clarke says Pierre Trudeau’s life is full of rich material for an opera. Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path is being written by librettist George Elliott Clarke and jazz composer D.D. Jackson.

Clarke, a poet acclaimed for his Whylah Falls and author of the novel George and Rue, has written two earlier operas: Beatrice Chancy, about slaves in Nova Scotia, and Québécité, which is the story of interracial lovers. Juno nominee Jackson, a Canadian-born pianist based in New York, worked with Clarke on Québécité.

Trudeau is the perfect subject for an opera, Clarke told CBC Radio. “He was a Shakespearean character — there’s no doubt about it. I mean this was a guy who lived a great romantic adventure. He appeals to me because he is partly an artist. He’s someone who was a writer, an intellectual. He was an active academic. He was also a traveller, an explorer in a sense of wanting to venture off into the unknown,” Clarke said.

Trudeau is a much-studied subject, with TV biopics, several biographies and the 1980 play Maggie and Pierre chronicling his life. But Clarke believes opera can capture the exuberance and passion of Canada during the Trudeau years, as well as some of the many changes that were happening in society. And he’s keen to portray some of the contradictions of Trudeau the man.

“He’s a figure about whom it is almost impossible to say anything definitive, because he is …encompassed by so many contradictions, but that’s what makes him interesting,” Clarke said.

In Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path, Clarke intends to stage the multicultural Trudeau, as he puts it, the one who appealed to what Clarke has called a “third force” in Canadian life, the ethnocultural and “visible” Canadians. The opera will focus on Trudeau’s experiences on the international stage: Historical characters including Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Mao Zedong have been written into the piece.

But there will also be duets with his wife Margaret Trudeau and with members of the press corps, with whom he had such an uncomfortable relationship. Clarke says he wants to explore Trudeau’s personality, not his policies.

“Our job in the opera is not to replay the political debate, which would probably be very stultifying and boring, but to try to show the human dimensions behind him and the motivation, the character motivation, for Trudeau, for Castro, for the people that we want to put him in the dialogue with — that he was in dialogue with,” he said.

“But that’s the emphasis here, to show them as people, not just as exponents of ideas, but as people who have come to hold particular points of view because of their personal experiences and because of the historical moment in which they find themselves,” Clarke said.

Clarke and Jackson went ahead with project after winning a competition for new works at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. They were awarded a miniscule budget — $20,000 — and plan a three-day run of the opera, possibly as early as next spring. The opera has been workshopped in Halifax, and a reading is planned for August at Stratford. The work is being scored for five vocalists — some playing multiple roles — and a small group of musicians.

“Trudeau is a hero of mine,” Clarke said. “I never voted for him, but at the same time I did appreciate him a symbol of a more inclusive Canada.”

— CBC Arts

Newlywed D.D. Jackson commemorates the serenity he feels in matrimony — as he tells us in his liner notes — on this rewarding set of originals. While Jackson claims that the calm of marriage has replaced some of the manic ambition he felt as a younger man, his music doesn’t reflect the transformation. Indeed, his writing is as lively and diverse as ever here.

As pianist and a composer, Jackson has long been adept at tempering sweet-as-honey melodies with dissonance, and he’s surrounded on this disc by bandmates that match him in this regard. Christian Howes, for example, moves effortlessly between acoustic and electric violins on the opener, “Chi-pin’s Song,” offering a languid solo on the former before exploring the latter’s rougher timbres.

Jackson’s tribute to Charles Mingus, “Three Shades of Mingus,” features the pianist in an appropriately raucous sextet setting with Howes on violin, Sam Newsome on soprano sax and Dana Leong on trombone. The solo round begins with a pleasingly strident exchange between Howes and Newsome, before Leong steps in for a more tuneful, bluesy exploration. Jackson follows with the Pullen-esque rumbling across the keyboard for which he’s well-known.

While the boisterous numbers recall the fervor of Jackson’s youthful writing, his newfound serenity is also well-represented. The title track is a charming ballad over lush changes, and “Love Theme from Quebecite,” composed originally for Jackson’s 2003 operatic collaboration with poet George Elliott Clarke, is haunting and expressive in a way that rivals the best of Michel Legrand or Nino Rota’s classic themes.

Even in tranquility, Jackson avoids being tranquilizing, and shows that he can consistently produce stirring music.

— Michael Borshuk, Coda Magazine

Reed man extraordinaire, James Carter, came in on Thursday night with a sextet. At 38, Carter is one of the elder statesmen of the latest generation of jazz stars. He started playing at age 11 by picking up a horn, “puzzling it out,” and then playing along with his mother’s Duke Ellington and Count Basie records.

Carter started the set by dedicating the first piece to the late Max Roach. The set that followed took off at a torrid pace. Carter has been described as being a part of the new avant-garde movement. There was none of that on the sold out opening night. This was bebop on the highest scale.

Joining Carter on the front line was Dwight Adams on trumpet. These two paired perfectly with each other in style and intensity. The rhythm section consisted of D.D. Jackson on keyboards, Rogel Glenn on vibes, Ralphe Armstrong on bass, and Leonard King on drums. Altogether, this is one phenomenally tight band.

Carter has the uncanny ability to play any jazz style imaginable and do it with his own voice. Bebop at its best is fast, frenetic and very high intensity. Speaking of intensity, it’s hard to find an artist that can play the entire spectrum of reeds, from flute to baritone sax, with as much dexterity and intensity as James Carter.

Yet, when playing a ballad, there is such romantic elegance, it’s hard to believe you’re listening to the same player. Rogel Glenn was featured on several pieces and was an absolute standout. Glenn even doubled on flute at one point.

Jackson had several notable solo moments. On one tune, where Jackson stood up while playing to get more leverage and intensity, the solo was the moment that punctuated the entire set. It was so incredible, after the piece ended, drummer King paused to get up from his kit and walk across the stage to give Jackson some tap to acknowledge and applaud the moment.

— James Adams, City Flight

D.D. Jackson has been living in New York since he first went there to study in 1989, and over that time the Ottawa-born pianist has become one of the most prominent Canadian players to win international recognition for his work with David Murray, Jane Bunnett and from leading his own projects.

His phenomenal keyboard abilities will be on display for a solo set Friday before bassist Don Bradshaw’s Big Ideas band takes over.

While Jackson is weary of generalizations, he feels that Canadian jazz players benefit from being neighbours to the American scene.

“There’s such a diversity out there, but speaking from personal experience I think there is something about growing up nearby American culture and not feeling completely a part of it. That gives you a slightly once-removed perspective and that’s a good thing. It allows you to take a step back and not be so burdened with the tradition.”

There may also be another factor tied to our geography.

“New York musicians have a very in-the-moment, competitive intensity, while a lot of the musicians I’ve worked with in Canada have a slightly more laid-back vibe which speaks to the wide-open spaces and lower population you find in Canada. But I’m sure there are exceptions to that too.”

These days, playing jazz in varied contexts is just part of Jackson’s multifaceted career as he juggles posts as music director for the New York-based Chicago City Limits comedy troupe, writing a bimonthly column for the magazine DownBeat, teaching work and time as a new father. Jackson hasn’t forgotten his roots either. In fact, he has penned two separate operas with librettos by Canadian writer George Elliott Clarke that have been presented here (Québécité, the semi-biographical story of his parents’ life, and Trudeau, based on the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the late former prime minister).

As one artist who’s very involved in the marketing of his own work, Jackson is exploring the current transition in the music business through his part in the independent ArtistShare organization, and his website offers an excellent example of the many avenues artists can use to bring their work to the public via videos, podcasts and more. While the pianist has been lucky enough to record a dozen albums for such labels as RCA and Justin Time, he notes that very few jazz artists make a living from their recordings.

Jackson says playing solo is the “most challenging” angle to performing, and promises a few tunes from his last CD, Serenity Song (2006, Justin Time), with lots of improvising Friday. After Don Bradshaw’s Big Ideas (with Mo Lefever and Dan Skakun) play, don’t be surprised if Jackson sits in with the trio.

— Roger Levesque, Edmonton Journal, Nov. 9, 2007

Pierre Elliott Trudeau was many different things to many people, but one thing he did has become fundamental to Canadian culture: the passing of a bill in 1971 which modernized Canada by officially declaring it a multicultural nation.

Halifax’s Mu Lan Chinese Cultural Centre and Pier 21 celebrated the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in Heritage Hall on Monday night, with an evening of poetry by George Elliott Clarke, Anna Quon, Jia Tsu Thompson and Cheng Sait Chia.

The second half of the program featured excerpts by jazz pianist D.D. Jackson from Québécité, and Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path, two jazz operas he wrote with libretti by Clarke. Soprano Janice Jackson and tenor John Lindsay-Botten sang arias and duets. Henry Bishop provided a half-hour of African drumming as the audience came into the hall.

Long at three hours, it was yet a happy affair. How could it not have been with Clarke’s hearty laugh ringing throughout the hall and that perpetual grin of mischievous glee?

Clarke read his What I Believe to set the tone. It’s a rapturous endorsement of the dignity and equality of all beings which he paced with enthusiastic hand gestures hammering the accents home. Thompson followed him with her own translation of the poem into Chinese.

Thompson contributed her own short poem in English about immigrant identity (Someone in Between) and read five poems from Cheng Sait Chia’s Turned Clay in Chinese.

Clarke continued with two readings from Québécité and Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path, as well as an excerpt from Whylah Falls in which the principal character, X, writes a letter home to his girlfriend Shelley after a long absence abroad. Clarke modelled the letter on Ezra Pound’s famous translation of Chinese poet Li Po’s The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter. Shao-Pin Luo then read a Chinese translation of the excerpt.

The Chinese tones and cadences clearly followed the same considerations of accent, rhythm and melody as English poems do. Appreciation of the poetic skill of these Chinese writers and speakers required nothing else but our willing attention. Anglophones listened raptly. Chinese speakers also got the jokes.

At intermission we drank exquisitely delicate Jasmine tea and munched almond cookies and tiny cakes filled with minced red-bean curd. Delicious and refreshing.

Back in Heritage Hall we listened to the Love Theme from Québécité. Jackson’s extravagantly florid instrumental over a jumpy bass line was the kind of composition Chopin might have written had he been a jazz composer. Lindsay-Botten and Janice Jackson sang a love duet called Lushly as Malcolm Bates and Colette Chan, who are based on D.D. Jackson’s African-Canadian father and Chinese mother.

Seven excerpts from Jackson-Clarke’s Trudeau followed, including Tahiti, where Trudeau first meets Margaret. Jackson brought down the house with her rendition of Satisfaction, a star turn from the opera in which a rebellious, sexy Margaret kicks up her heels as she liberates herself by partying with the Rolling Stones. Jackson’s physical enthusiasm and the astonishing power of her high notes earned her prolonged applause and shouts of approval.

— Halifax Chronicle-Herald

What is a jazz opera? That’s a question even the people involved in creating Québécité have a hard time answering.

What they can say is that — much like the Guelph Jazz Festival where it will make its debut — the jazz opera is about pushing the boundaries.

“You can take the liberties here that you might not be able to take elsewhere,” explained composer D.D. Jackson at a recent rehearsal at the University of Guelph.

“Here we can be much more lush and poetic. It means the element of improvisation has been added. It’s a very jazzy approach.”

Ajay Heble, the festival’s artistic director commissioned the jazz opera for festival’s tenth anniversary after a similar experiment at the 2000 festival, Passages, was a huge success. In the spirit of taking chances and trying new things, he approached Jackson, a Juno-Award winning jazz pianist to compose the work, and Governor General’s Award-winning poet George Elliott Clarke to pen the libretto, or storyline, of the jazz opera.

Described as “very much a multi-cultural romance for our times”, by Heble, Québécité tells the overlapping stories of two interracial couples establishing romantic relationships that cross racial and cultural boundaries.

In part the story is based on the memoirs of Jackson’s African-American father and Chinese-Canadian mother.

“I thought it was a really wonderful story,” said Clarke of the basis for his libretto. “It’s a very romantic story.”

While the “long overdue” story touches on modern Canada’s values of diversity and tolerance, Heble notes it’s written in a way “that doesn’t hit you over the head with politics.”

Indeed Clarke, a University of Waterloo graduate who teaches world literature at the University of Toronto, explains his goal was write something “romantic and light.”

“It’s really an old-fashioned love story. Boys meet girls, split up and get married. It’s the oldest story in the book.”

Jazz, notes Clarke, is the perfect outlet for both the love story and its interracial undertone.

“Telling stories about love has always been a part of jazz, and especially love across boundaries. And jazz was a multi-cultural music from the beginning. At the music’s very birth different aspects of cultures and traditions were combined. In a sense we’re kind of returning to the roots of jazz.”

Like the characters that make up the opera, its cast and crew features a cross-section of Canada’s pluralistic society.

The play is directed by African-Canadian Colin Taylor, the Artistic Producer of (Theatre) WUM in Toronto, and a former producer/director for CBC Radio Drama.

Former Guelph resident and African-Canadian frontman of R&B group Jacksoul Haydain Neale plays Ovide. Indian-Canadian vocalist Kiran Ahluwahlia is Laxmi. Korean-Canadian experimentalist jazz vocalist Yoon Choi plays Collette. Jazz musician Malcolm meanwhile is played by real-life New York-based African-American jazz and gospel singer Dean Bowman.

Jackson notes the varied talents of the performers plays right into the concept of a jazz opera. Music was composed after the cast was chosen and rather than asking each to conform to one particular style, allows them to showcase their distinctive and unique talents.

“Literally the stuff is put together based on what our strengths are,” notes Neale.

“I think the only unifying elements are perhaps more of a melodic bent and an open-mindedness in my approach,” explained Jackson.

Clarke’s task was to write a libretto that would accommodate the music. It was a challenge he relished.

“The roots of poetry have always been in song. One of the great joys and pleasures is being able to use rhyme. Contemporary poets have felt rhyme was old-fashioned and old-hat. I’ve been happy to rediscover the joys of rhyme. It forces you to think of the connections between the words. What does glove have to do with love. It’s not simple.”

— Eric Martensson, Kitchener Waterloo Record

The musical evocation of New York is nothing new. Julius Hemphill and Laura Nyro have done it before, and for all of the dissimilarities between their works their powers of evocation leave Jackson with a lot to live up to. He does so with aplomb, and produces music with no modest personality of its own. His is the only work of the three to appear in the wake of the events of 9/11, though these events have little overt influence upon the music.

James Spaulding is perhaps the most widely known of the musicians here, and his incendiary alto sax playing is one of the highlights of the disc. “Third Invocation” is a rare opportunity to hear him playing entirely solo, and he brings characteristic focus, intensity and depth of personality to his playing — if the city that never sleeps contains streets that do then they’ve yet to be better evoked.

“Brooklyn Lullaby,” which immediately follows, is perhaps the most affecting piece of composition on the disc. Such is the depth of its evocation that the listener isn’t in any doubt regarding Jackson’s fondness for the place, and it’s rare to hear a lullaby featuring a swaggeringly bluesy violin solo — the playing of Christian Howes will be worth hearing out for if this is anything to go by…

“Hopes And Dreams: Introduction” has one of those melodies that worm their way into the consciousness and happily also features Spaulding in full flight, albeit with the passing problem of questionable intonation. Again he does the work of setting the scene for “Hopes And Dreams: Main Section & Conclusion” which, in a kind of ambiguous reference to the events of 9/11 evokes a joyous, exuberant city seemingly able to overcome adversity through depth of will.

As a suite per se the music doesn’t hang together in quite the formally correct way. It does however contain plenty of highlights and is of an order that pays repeated listening. It’s also an example of jazz being relevant and of a player-composer responding to his surroundings just as Duke Ellington did all those decades ago with “Harlem Air Shaft.” It’s also a damn sight more engrossing than any dextrously facile re-reading of Ellington’s works.

— Nic Jones, All About Jazz

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

D.D. Jackson has already displayed his formidable talents as a pianist on a series of strong recordings, including the exceptional duet sessions Paired Down, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. But Suite for New York is an achievement of another order altogether. A project of orchestral dimensions, albeit without an actual orchestra, the suite utilizes a jazz septet fleshed out with a violin and cello — and, on one track, a poet (David Gonzalez) who intones a work of his own.

Jackson was deeply affected by the 9-11 tragedy, and his heartfelt emotion seeps into his expansive work. Portraits of Jackson’s adopted city — he’s a Canadian by birth — are evoked in sweeping music that makes great use, both individually and collectively, of such accomplished players as saxophonist James Spaulding, trumpeter Brad Turner, drummer Dafnis Prieto, and Jackson himself.

With this recording, Jackson steps up to the plate as a truly multi-dimensional jazz musician.

— Steve Futterman, Barnes & Noble Online

D.D. Jackson has taken his artistic ambitions to a higher level with the release of Suite for New York. After gradually building a solid reputation as a jazz pianist with his own style, often consisting of constellations of notes formed by aggressively percussive adjacencies, Jackson now is pursuing his compositional goals. One of his first results is Suite for New York, which grew gradually from one track on his solo CD, …so far, and then gained momentum after 9/11. Because Jackson grew up in Ottawa, his perspective on New York City is like that of many others who decided to move there to realize their dreams…or to attempt to do so.

In Jackson’s case, he did realize many of those dreams, and he has chosen to make New York City his home. However, Jackson’s pursuit of those dreams forms the context for most of the themes on the CD. Tracks receive titles like “Hopes and Dreams.” Or David Gonzalez’ poem captures the immensity of a city that contains “Eight Million Dreamers.” And thus, the allure of New York remains as it provides opportunity, or a second chance, for those who dare to risk it.

Jackson’s decision was to write a suite about the city, and it consists of 11 movements in sequence, from the “First Invocation” of Jackson’s solemn and subdued descriptions on piano, to the “Awakening,” consisting of fluttering flutework and shimmering cello, before the city does awake to cacophony. And in this respect, Jackson’s work is reminiscent of what Mingus did with dissonance when his works imitated the street sounds outside the venues where he performed.

Continuing the suite with additional impressions of New York, including “The Barrio” to describe the Latin influence on the city and “BQE” to suggest the speed and chaos of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Jackson brings the diversity of the city together on the final track. “Towers of Light” recalls the beacons that were installed briefly less than a year after the September 11 attacks to eerily commemorate the two buildings that arose from the same sites. Bringing together all of the threads of the suite for resolution, Jackson repeats the motive that he introduced with the “First Invocation.” Without rhythm to ground their playing, the horn players break apart in free improvisation before a final statement of the theme.

Cannily, Jackson includes members in his group who normally don’t record on U.S. jazz labels. For that reason, some of the musicians — like Canadian baritone saxophonist David Mott, sounding more like a Frank Hittner than a Gerry Mulligan, on “The City: Central Park Promenade” — immediately capture the listener’s attention from the force of their solos. Trombonist Tom Walsh, from Montreal, is equally effective in creating a personalized sound whenever he performs.

The one person who isn’t often in the spotlight on this CD is Jackson, whose intent this time is to present the totality of his conception, which consists of multiple parts, rather than an individual performance. As Jackson moves beyond his role as jazz pianist and into the position of impressionistic composer, his career moves to a higher level that will characterize Jackson as one of his generation’s most important jazz artists.

— Don Williamson, Jazzreviews.com

Jackson is a pianist who sounds eccentric in straight ahead company and conservative when involved in more left field activities. The fact is that, despite his allegiance to his teacher, Don Pullen, he is a pianist who deliberately paints on a broad canvas. He is also a useful composer and adept arranger and all three skills are well presented here.

If anything, The Welcoming is delivered with an almost Ray Bryantish bounce, there is a hint of Brubeck on Jam Band, while the Pullenesque dash is captured on Le Shuffle and Cubano-Funk. The latter’s somewhat abstract opening is a surprise but it moves on with Jackson’s knuckled right hand reminding us of his mentor’s sense of drama.

Okegwo and Prieto contribute consistently; at no time sinking into the background. Of the guests, the normally frenetic Howes is perhaps the surprise. He overdubs several violin parts on the gentle Summer and introduces his restrained classical persona on the title track. Bryant blends perfectly with his leader on Romanza and he shows to advantage on Le Shuffle and Sigame.

This album marks the Canadian pianist’s return to his native Justin Time label and can be warmly recommended.

— Barry McRae, Jazz Journal International, Nov/02