The New Orleans Jazz Museum and NOCCA Foundation presents Concert Series featuring GLADNEY on Tuesday, May 20th at 2:00 PM CDT inside the New Orleans Jazz Museum.
This program takes place inside our third floor Performance Center, listening room. Admission is free and open to the public, seating is limited and offered first come, first serve.
Enjoy Jazz Music from home with the New Orleans Jazz Museum! Join the Jazz Museum online for our daily Live-Stream Concert Series, in which dynamic musicians perform live from the Jazz Museum! Tune in at 2pm on facebook.com/nolajazzmuseum/live to watch for free.
Chris Severin (Bio) @turnupmybass - Instagram handle / tag
Chris Severin is an amazingly talented, versatile, and accomplished master-musician from the Treme area of New Orleans. He graduated from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in 1976 during his adolescence and later attended Southern University of New Orleans (SUNO) for music education. The greats Alvin Batiste, Ellis Marsalis, and Walter Payton were all a part of Mr. Severin’s musical training.
A skilled teacher himself, Mr. Severin believes in and promotes consistent practice as the path to a musician’s success and pay off. His daily discourse often details music history, theory, and fundamentals. In the business for over 30 years, Mr. Severin’s extensive client list includes many of the world’s most gifted singers and musicians including: Diane Reeves, Dr. John, Terrence Blanchard, Allen Toussaint, Bonnie Raitt, Nicholas Payton, Ellis Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Lou Rawls, Alvin Batiste, Herlin Riley, Victor Goines, Irma Thomas and Kent Jordan. Mr. Severin has played his seven string bass across the globe and is a frequent flyer for the top jazz recording companies such as Blue Note, Rounder, MCA, and Windham Hill Records. He is a member of Union of New Orleans Musicians, AFM Local 174-496, BMI, the co-owner of Chrisan Music, Lead Engineer at the Box Studios-Studio A, prior member of Windjammer, Vietnam, Allen Toussaint Band, and holds several sponsorships including Schecter Guitars and DR Strings. Mr. Severin’s universal sound sets him apart. He plays seven-string and acoustic bass for all genres of music including R&B, jazz, and hip-hop. In his capacity as faculty member, Mr. Severin provides music, media arts, and jazz instruction, for the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). He also continues to provide private lessons on everything bass and is a teacher during the Sunday Youth Music Workshop at Tipitinas.
Donald Harrison Jr. (Bio) @bigchiefdonaldharrison - Instagram handle / tag
New Orleans born saxophonist Donald Harrison is a musician/composer who master musicians consider a master of every era of jazz, soul, funk, and a composer of orchestral classical music. He is also a genius, according to geniuses like Eddie Palmieri and Mike Clark. In the HBO drama Treme, Emmy winning director David Simon created two characters to portray how Harrison innovated new styles of music. Harrison has appeared as an actor/musician in 9 episodes of Treme, Oscar-winning director Johnathon Demme’s film "Rachel Getting Married," Spike Lee’s “When The Levee’s Broke,” documentary, and Marvel’s “Luke Cage.” This talented artist is the recognized Big Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans culture and was made a Chief in 2019 by Queen Diambi Kabatusuila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.
Harrison honed his experience playing with Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, Eddie Palmieri, Dr. John, Lena Horne, McCoy Tyner, Dr. Eddie Henderson, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Billy Cobham, Chuck Loeb, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Digable Planets, Guru’s Jazzmatazz, The Headhunters, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and The Notorious BIG. He has performed with over 200 jazz masters and created three influential styles of jazz. At the age of nineteen, Harrison created a modern jazz take on the New Orleans second-line tradition and introduced his composition New York Second-Line to the jazz world in 1979. By the mid-’80s, he created Nouveau Swing, a distinctive sound that blended the swing beat of modern jazz with hip-hop, funk, and soul music. In the ’90s, Harrison recorded hits in the smooth jazz genre. He began exploring music through the lens of quantum physics in 2000. With quantum jazz, Harrison heard how to move music from a two-dimensional state into a four-dimensional state. Harrison's latest recordings feature his Omniverse Music multi-singles concept.
Donald Harrison Jr. (Bio Continued) @bigchiefdonaldharrison - Instagram handle
The recordings include "The Magic Touch," which melds the artist's multifaceted life experiences into a unique musical journey of nine different versions of the same song in nine different genres. His 2024 Ropeadope Records release, "The Art of Passion," is three versions of the same song, with one version being a romantic trap instrumental. In the third recording, "Congo Square Suite," he channels his experience of becoming the Big Chief of Congo Square. The first movement is an Afro-New Orleans chant. The second movement is a classical work based on Afro-New Orleans Harrison becoming a Big Chief in Afro-New Orleans culture. The third movement features Harrison and his jazz trio with The Moscow Symphony Orchestra.
Harrison has mentored artists such as The Notorious Big, Jonathon Batiste, Christian aTunde' Adjuah Scott, Trombone Shorty, and Esperanza Spaulding.
In 2024, look for Harrison performing music from his Omniverse Music multi-genre singles. He is composing orchestral classical music for upcoming premiers and adding hip-hop/jazz to his multi-genre recordings and performances.
JULIAN GARCIA (Bio)
Scanning Julian Garcia’s “present work,” it’s clear that he could easily fit into either the contemporary or traditional jazz line-ups. It is quite an accomplishment to have the ability to play in the free style with master Kidd Jordan and be up to performing New Orleans classic jazz with clarinetist Louis Ford. The native Honduran began his musical journey playing in his junior high school band in the Bronx, where he and his family moved when he was 4. He arrived in New Orleans when he was 15 and soon auditioned for the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. The drummer’s first professional gig was playing in the Caribbean style with Rudy Mills’ band.
After graduating from NOCCA, he had the opportunity to share a bandstand with pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis performing at LeClub in the Hyatt Regency Hotel and attended Southern University of New Orleans for a year. During this era he supplied the rhythm behind the piano of Harry Connick Jr. at another now-defunct nightspot, Nexus. He remained behind the drums when David Torkanowsky took over the keyboards in a group that included bassist Chris Severin and Victor Goines.
That gig lasted five years. Noah’s on Esplanade was also a hot spot for modern jazz in the early 1980s, and Garcia got to play behind greats like saxophonist Eddie Harris and trumpeter Donald Byrd as well as our own vocalist, Lady BJ. Garcia moved to New York in 1988, took some classes and made some gigs, primarily with organist Rahn Burton. About a year later, he returned to New Orleans and worked day jobs and sometimes with violinist Michael Ward. There was a period when Garcia pretty much vanished from the New Orleans jazz scene. It wasn’t until the late ’90s that he reemerged. He credits exploring a new way of utilizing his drums, a solo drum approached called the melodic ostimato technique, for inspiring him to play again. He also began researching his ethnic Garinagu heritage, producing a solo recording of the music, “Garifuna Story” and receiving a Louisiana Fellowship Award to perform the work.
Quotable: “I just try to have fun.”