Bruce Harris’s affinity for jazz music began as a child, listening to his grandfather play the alto sax in his family’s south Bronx apartment. After seeing Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues, Bruce’s love affair with the trumpet began.

The influences of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown and Dizzy Gillespie hovered over Bruce’s early training like angels, driving his dreams. As a junior in high school, Bruce performed in the “Essentially Ellington” jazz band competition, sharing the stage with Wynton Marsalis, who would become his friend and mentor. By graduation he had been selected to join the National Grammy High School Jazz Band, and soon thereafter, won a Blue Note Jazz Scholarship. As a student at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, he studied with the legendary trumpeter Jon Faddis, and while still in school, traveled to Europe as a guest soloist with the Netherlands Jazz Orchestra. Before he even left college, this prodigious young talent had played alongside such legends as Marsalis, Billy Taylor and Dave Brubeck.

Wynton Marsalis picked Harris for the Tony Award winning Broadway musical After Midnight, where he played for such stars as Fantasia, Vanessa Williams, Toni Braxton, KD Lang, and Patti LaBelle. He’s a regular at New York’s hottest jazz spots, including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Small’s, Ginny’s, Minton’s and more—and coming up, a must-hear artist at the Attucks Jazz Club.