RIVERNIGER JAZZ ART ENSEMBLE "Dr.C"

I'll give it to you straight.My greatest passion is making music.The Tools that I use are the bass, keyboards and guitar. James Brown and Miles Davis are my greatest influences. I greatly enjoy photography and art. I combine figurative abstraction of lines with Jazz favorings of color. Sound, Light, Art . Picasso is my favorite Artist!I use many techniques and tools when I work with the visual. At the start of a project, I may take a walk in the park,listen to Jazz music, stroll the streets of Washington,DC and look at the faces of the people. I notice color, I listen to sound. I allow my intuitive energy to be released. My Palette is whatever is available at the time. Sometimes I paint with music! Other times I compose music with color!The LIGHT of the CREATOR is always leading me in many different directions! I'm also a vegetarian and support healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. Of the famous it would be great to spend some time with Herbie Hancock,Stanley Clarke,and Chuck Brown as their music greatly inspires me on the keyboards, bass, and guitar respectively. I begin studying music at the age of nine at Northside Elementary School In Gretna Va. My instrument was the french horn. At age ten I was asked to play in the Northside High School Marching Band led by my music teacher "Mr. John R. Martin". At age eleven,my parents moved to Washington,DC where I took up playing the cornet at J.C. Nalle School. At the same time I joined a garage band called the "Corbas".I played guitar and sometimes bass for the group. We were not that good. Gigs didn't came that often, mostly from my mother's "Saturday Night Parties" and talent shows.Upon entering college (Catholic University of America) I decided to stop playing music and concentrate on visual arts and Track & Field. After finishing college I became somewhat nomadic, painting and selling my art as I could.Finally in 1982 I met Mr. Willex Brown, a graduate of the Berklee school of music. Mr. Brown taught me chords,scales, theory and how to form a band. Soon afterwards I joined groups "CODE DF" (Code Drug Free) and "FORMULA" led by Mr. Charles Woods on Alto sax, and Jim Pritchett on guitars respectively.Off and on the members of the band would form their own group using the same core of musicians but changing the name.My Group was called "The Upper 16th Street Medical Group"( after a song Duke Ellington make famous call "the Upper Manhattan Medical Group")with Mr. Willex Brown on trumpet,Mr.Bruce Robinson on tenor sax, Mr. Charles Woods on alto sax,Mr. James Pritchett on guitar,Mr. Wendell Fickler on bass ,"Mighty" Joe Link on drums, and myself ..boards.This band gigged a lot in and around the Washington DC area. During this time I held many a jam session with a slew of musicians from all over WASHINGTON,DC area. At one time the jam sessions were called "The Afro-American Jam Sessions of Washington DC. Now We are about to come together again as the "RIVERNIGER JAZZ ART ENSEMBLE". A fusion of Jazz,FUNK,BLUES and ROCK! Look for us SOON!

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