Virtual online video Charlie Parker Jazz Festival: Bebop is the roots of American instrumental modernism, , day 1

Fearing Hurricane Irene, New York City suspended everything last weekend (Aug 27-28) including the two-day, two-location Charlie Parker Jazz Festival. But not my  online video Charlie Parker Jazz fest, a humble video-clip stand-in for live sets by harmonica-and-guitarist Toots Thielemans, saxophonist colossus James Carter, alto saxist Tia Fuller and singer Cecile McLorin Salvant scheduled but not-to-be in Harlem and the East Village.

Monday, Aug. 29 — today! — the 91st birthday of the immortal alto saxophonist, called “Bird” (short for “Yardbird”), who legendarily died of the fast life in 1955. He and associates including trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie — with whom he plays “Hot House” in one of only two filmed performances, posted above – developed the musical language that soloists in jazz, blues, better rock/pop and improvisational music have built on ever since. Bebop is the roots of American instrumental modernism, if you will. 

You can hear bits of Bird and Diz’s influence (fellow bop originators included Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Tadd Dameron, Charlie Christian) — dramatic, daringly harmonized pitches, slurred phrases of irregular lengths, acidic rather than sweet sound, rhythmic complexity —  in all the acts who were to be at the scratched fests. Their contemporary reference points and manifestations demonstrate the shape-making power the past retains in the present. My virtual CP Jazz Fest is constructed for listening fun, but each musician glances back while being here now. For instance:

Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, from Florida, doesn’t have a record out yet, but she won last fall’s Monk Institute competition and her sets as shown on YouTube are entertaining, steeped in classic blues. She could have kicked off the Bird fest at Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park with a rousing old call to gather like this hit for Bessie Smith in 1927 — Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” —

Then Ms. Salvant might have moved into sunny early (1935) Billie Holiday territory with “Miss Brown To You,” or bop-redolent repertoire such as All The Things You Are, which she delivers with Sarah Vaughan panache and which Bird recorded in 1945 and again in Toronto with an all-star combo, as captured on Jazz at Massey Hall (1952). I don’t know what she would have done to end. Something bold like her scat moment onstage with Al Jarreau, Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Dee Dee Bridgewater, guitarist Kevin Eubanks, finale of the Monk competition she won?

Alto saxophonist Tia Fuller & band up next. An exciting member of a new generation of women jazz leaders, Tia is featured on tours with Beyonce, and has learned something about presentation, check it out. She’d likely start with a tune such as “Breakthrough” from her album Healing Force, which she played at the 2010 JJA Jazz Awards:

And maybe she’d end with Bird’s “Billie’s Bounce,” (her version starting at 2:55 after a tv news interview from 2008).

James Carter, building on the pitch, is a ferocious reeds virtuoso to whom the entirety of jazz history is a living thing. Carter does typically dynamic things with “Night in Tunisia,” Dizzy Gillespie’s exotic bebop theme recorded by him with Bird at Town Hall in 1945, performed by Carter with trumpeter Nicholas Payton . . .

For all his bluesy roots, Charlie Parker harbored some dicty musical aspirations — and accomplished one, to play with orchestral backing, on two sessions compiled as Bird With Strings (and reeds). Carter takes on movie soundtrack ballad  “Laura”  which Bird recast (arranged by Joe Lipman) in the concert Eastwood After Hours at Carnegie Hall.

Carter doesn’t end with ballads, though — he tears up blues like “Walk the Dog” with his organ trio, as at Madison Square Park just a year ago. . .

Jean “Toots” Thielemans, harmonica soloist, guitarist, whistler and songwriter, jammed with Charlie Parker at a session in Paris in 1949. He wa to have headlined the Charlie Parker Jazz Fest and might have eased in using the bop’s standard “How High The Moon” (Ella Fitzgerald , with the Gillespie Orchestra, scats it). Suprise guest! Popular, soulful altoist David Sanborn joins Toots on sopranino sax (closer to the harmonica’s register than soprano or alto) for “Little Suede Shoes” which Bird recorded in 1951.

Of course, Thielemans won’t leave without playing his signature piece, the jazz waltz “Bluesette”.

And that’s all for today’s Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, quite sufficient to lead to finding a Bird favorite — like “Now’s The Time,” with (as I write in my book) the first mature solo Miles Davis committed to record in 1945. Tune in for day two oft my virtual online video Parker fest (as it would have gone down in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, were it not for prospects of bad storm) with Archie Shepp,  Anat Cohen, Gerald Clayton and Madeleine Peyroux (?!?)

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