“Darryl Harper has honed his playing chops over a 30-year career composing and performing on gospel, funk, chamber music and jazz bandstands. He has become distinctly adept at composing and performing music with a virtuosity that mines multiple musical disciplines with a boundless conceptual alchemy, and this virtuosity and vision drives the music on The Need’s Got To Be So Deep. Throughout this album, Harper declares his conceptual, technical, compositional, and historical authority and command, and makes his perspective on what jazz is and its possibilities brilliantly apparent.”
–from the album liner notes by Bill Gaskins

“This is a gem–pay attention and you’ll be rewarded many times over.”
–Richard Kamins, Step Tempest (full article)

“…what may be the most original recording to be released during 2014”
—Brent Black, criticaljazz.com

“sensual and languid in every way”
–Marc Meyers, Jazz Wax

Track Listing

Disc 1
1. Tale of a Suburban Cowboy
2. Scrapbook
3. The Side Pipers

Jazz Clarinet Quartet
4. Variations
5. Ballad
6. Interlude
7. Spin

8. Not Like This

Disc 2
1. The Need’s Got To Be So Deep
2. Postures
3. Anthem for Unity
4. Water Pistol
5. Playtime

Dances for Outcasts
6. Prodigal Son
7. The Fugitive

8. Prelude and Fugue-Like

Woodwind Quintet
9. Bach Corral
10. Pandeirinho
11. Penthex