JOEL HARRISON
Genres: Eclectic Fusion, Post-Fusion Contemporary, Third Stream, Blues, World Fusion, Pop, Art Song, Folk, Progressive Big Band, RnB, Classic Fusion • United States

Joel Harrison’s musical journey has few parallels in modern music. Guitarist, composer, arranger, vocalist, songwriter, bandleader – Harrison deftly juggles all of these roles, melding influences from jazz, classical, country, rock, and world music. His expansive sound fits equally well in jazz clubs and concert halls – and the occasional dive bar across town. For brevity’s sake it would be safest to call Harrison’s home base jazz, a descriptor that mutates to fit a staggering array of styles and approaches. He finds inspiration from music too often barred from admission into the jazz consciousness, taking his place in a tradition of exploration and interpretation that reaches through the open-eared reinventions of Miles Davis and Charles Ives to the American rhapsodies of Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac, or Hank Williams. “Ultimately you’re just trying to arrive at great music,” he says. “Sometimes the best methodology is to leave people to their own devices, and read more...