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Jerome Harris

About Me

Jerome Harris has been widely acclaimed as a versatile and penetrating stylist on both the guitar and the bass guitar.

Harris's first major professional performing experience came as bass guitarist with Sonny Rollins in 1978; from 1988 to 1994 he played guitar with Rollins, and has also recorded and/or performed live on six continents with Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, Ray Anderson, Bobby Previte, Oliver Lake, Don Byron, Bob Stewart, George Russell, Julius Hemphill, Amina Claudine Myers, Ned Rothenberg, Bob Moses, and many others. His extensive international touring has included several stints in Japan with Sonny Rollins, as well as several U.S. State Department tours: India and the Middle East with Jay Hoggard, five African nations with Oliver Lake and Jump Up, and Thailand, Maldives, Sri Lanka and India with Jamie Baum and Kenny Wessel.

Jerome Harris has appeared on over fifty recordings. His albums as a leader include *Rendezvous*--the first jazz recording from the high-end audio magazine Stereophile--and *Hidden In Plain View* (New World), where his acoustic bass guitar is at the heart of an all-star group, creatively interpreting pieces by the inspiring, challenging jazz master Eric Dolphy. Among his recordings as a featured sideman are Jack DeJohnette's *Oneness* (ECM), Marty Ehrlich's *Malinke's Dance* (Omnitone), Ray Anderson Lapis Lazuli Band's *Funkorific* (Enja), and Ned Rothenberg Sync's *Port Of Entry* (Intuition), demonstrating his unusual expressive range, stylistic insight, and creativity.

Jerome Harris has contributed a major piece of jazz scholarship to the recently-published collection of essays *The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective* (Garland). His essay, “Jazz on the Global Stage,” is a wide-ranging “insider's view” of the history, present state, and future implications of the spreading and flourishing of jazz in locales far from its African American origins. In the volume's introduction, the editor--award-winning jazz scholar Ingrid Monson--writes that “Harris provides the most comprehensive portrait currently available of jazz outside the United States.”

Jerome Harris's formative musical experiences included singing and playing rural and urban blues, folk and gospel music, as well as the full range of American popular music genres. After studying psychology and social relations at Harvard University, he attended New England Conservatory of Music as a scholarship student in jazz guitar, graduating with honors in 1977.