New Orleans-born saxophonist and musician/composer Donald Harrison is a genius, according to geniuses like Eddie Palmieri and Mike Clark. According to master musicians, he is also a master of every era of jazz, soul, and funk. 

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, he recorded hits in the smooth jazz genre. He began exploring music through the lens of quantum physics in 2000, using quantum jazz to move music from a two-dimensional state into a four-dimensional state. 

In the HBO drama Treme, Emmy-winning director David Simon created two characters to portray the ways in which Harrison originated new styles of music. Harrison himself appeared in nine episodes of the series, as well as in Johnathon Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, Spike Lee’s When The Levee’s Broke, and Marvel’s Luke Cage. He 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.

He has performed with over 200 jazz masters and created three influential styles of jazz. He refined his skills 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, and has been a mentor to artists as diverse as Jonathon Batiste, Christian Scott, Trombone Shorty, and Esperanza Spaulding. In 2022, he received the prestigious NEA Jazz Master Award.