Henry Darragh is a talented multi-instrumentalist and composer currently working in Houston Texas while doing graduate studies at Moores School of Music. In addition to being a first-rate trombonist, Darragh can also play jazz piano, sing, compose, arrange, lead, educate, and inspire. To hear his debut CD Tell Her For Me one might think of him as an up and coming jazz songwriter who swings and croons vocals, but that would only be the latest chapter in his story.
Born and raised in Pasadena Texas, Darragh was surrounded by music from a young age, and felt he might eventually become a classical trombonist. But jazz was always lurking in the background. Fortunately he had instructors as early as 7th grade who were into jazz, and turned him onto classic recordings, and although he loved it then, jazz remained a kind of secret language until college. According to Darragh, “my family always had a piano in the house, which I used to teach myself bad habits.”
This love of music was a feeling which continued through undergraduate studies at San Jacinto College where he took Theory I with percussionist Ray Dillard, and later private lessons “not so much to learn percussion as to just hang out with Ray,” a talented musician well versed in many genres including jazz, who now teaches at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto (Canada). Later at the University of Houston Darragh played with the U of H jazz ensemble, providing opportunities to play piano with guest clinicians such as Lou Soloff, Randy Brecker, and David Sanchez, as well as with Houston-based artists such as Joel Fulgham, David Craig, Erin Wright, Kelly Dean and others.
Darragh was then accepted into Stuart Ostrow’s Musical Theater Lab at the U of H, where he worked with the Tony Award Winner Stuart Ostrow (Madame Butterfly, 1776, Pippin), and cites this experience working with both directors and writers as something that has really pushed him as a songwriter. He is continuing with graduate studies at Moores School of Music in Houston.
Darragh has worked professionally with artists such as Los Skarnales, TJ Funk, the Steve Lippia Big Band, Adela Dalto, DJ Sun’s Solar Grooves, and Joe B’s Rebel Crew, and is now appearing as a solo artist on piano and vocals either by himself, as a duet or with a small group, while staying very busy as a session artist, and on-call jazz performer.
