Lois Gilbert
August-25th-2003, 07:18 PM
Celebrating Charlie Parker in an Easy, Neighborly Way
August 25, 2003
By BEN RATLIFF
NTImes
The drummer Billy Hart had just finished a set, and he was
hanging around near the rear of the stage when the drummer
Roy Haynes began his own set at the Charlie Parker Jazz
Festival. It was after 6 on Saturday evening at Marcus
Garvey Park in Harlem. As Mr. Haynes began with Parker's
tune "Diverse," Mr. Hart's face opened up. As Mr. Hart
watched his elder colleague, his face became animated, and
finally incredulous, as if he had heard a series of funny,
slightly rude remarks.
Mr. Haynes's playing was full of presumptuous gestures -
hard, aggressive timekeeping on cymbals punctuated by hard
slaps on the snare drum that came in surprising places.
Then silence. And then the sound of the snare again, with
nothing to cushion it. His drumming flows from his entire
body's state of high alert: in his second song he ended a
solo by hopping up from his drum set and heel-stomping the
pedal of his high-hat cymbal; then he walked around the
stage with a bounce, listening to the sound of the band
from several angles.
The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which used to be a
privately produced annual concert around Parker's birthday
on Aug. 29, 1920, announced its demise last year. But it
came back, under the auspices of the City Parks Foundation.
(It continued yesterday afternoon with a different band at
Tompkins Square Park in the East Village.) And the moment
involving Mr. Hart and Mr. Haynes was typical of the lucky
bonuses on Saturday. Because it is a free, relaxed event,
musicians do not feel as if they have to hide backstage,
and the audience feels as audiences, ideally, should: that
it owns the area.
These unscripted moments in the audience happened all day.
A group of matrons dared a sweet, shamefaced security guard
to stop them from dancing in the front row. A tall, lithe
man in a fedora hopped and pirouetted up and down the
concrete steps of the raked amphitheater, striking up a
spontaneous long-distance duet with Mr. Haynes during a
beautiful version of the Thelonious Monk ballad "Ask Me
Now." And so on.
The afternoon started slowly. Wessell Anderson, the alto
saxophonist, led a quartet playing tunes associated with
Parker; Mr. Anderson made round, handsome lines that curved
up into long tones, while his pianist, Sascha Perry,
hammered out laconic, percussive Bud Powell-style
accompaniment. The singer Carla Cook used a straightforward
talent through a wide repertory with a remarkable lack of
airs: the set encompassed nimble scatting (in the Eddie
Jefferson song "Oh Gee"), R&B, a jazz samba and gospel.
But the third of four sets jolted the crowd. The
saxophonists Sonny Fortune, Vincent Herring and Gary Bartz
performed as the Three Altos - a simple enough concept, and
they didn't need more than simple. With Mr. Hart on drums,
Ronnie Mathews on piano and Cecil McBee on bass, the group
tore through bebop, making it the stunning, spangling thing
it can be.
Each player staked out a different relationship to the
music. Mr. Fortune played with an exciting,
near-antagonistic ferocity, occasionally letting out
reed-squeaks as he unloaded. Mr. Herring played with a
lovely, supple tone, several steps sweeter than Parker's,
letting you hear bebop's rhythmic subdivisions in a nearly
classical replication. Mr. Bartz's demeanor lay somewhere
in between, playing bop language into original solo ideas
without thundering or overstuffing.
August 25, 2003
By BEN RATLIFF
NTImes
The drummer Billy Hart had just finished a set, and he was
hanging around near the rear of the stage when the drummer
Roy Haynes began his own set at the Charlie Parker Jazz
Festival. It was after 6 on Saturday evening at Marcus
Garvey Park in Harlem. As Mr. Haynes began with Parker's
tune "Diverse," Mr. Hart's face opened up. As Mr. Hart
watched his elder colleague, his face became animated, and
finally incredulous, as if he had heard a series of funny,
slightly rude remarks.
Mr. Haynes's playing was full of presumptuous gestures -
hard, aggressive timekeeping on cymbals punctuated by hard
slaps on the snare drum that came in surprising places.
Then silence. And then the sound of the snare again, with
nothing to cushion it. His drumming flows from his entire
body's state of high alert: in his second song he ended a
solo by hopping up from his drum set and heel-stomping the
pedal of his high-hat cymbal; then he walked around the
stage with a bounce, listening to the sound of the band
from several angles.
The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which used to be a
privately produced annual concert around Parker's birthday
on Aug. 29, 1920, announced its demise last year. But it
came back, under the auspices of the City Parks Foundation.
(It continued yesterday afternoon with a different band at
Tompkins Square Park in the East Village.) And the moment
involving Mr. Hart and Mr. Haynes was typical of the lucky
bonuses on Saturday. Because it is a free, relaxed event,
musicians do not feel as if they have to hide backstage,
and the audience feels as audiences, ideally, should: that
it owns the area.
These unscripted moments in the audience happened all day.
A group of matrons dared a sweet, shamefaced security guard
to stop them from dancing in the front row. A tall, lithe
man in a fedora hopped and pirouetted up and down the
concrete steps of the raked amphitheater, striking up a
spontaneous long-distance duet with Mr. Haynes during a
beautiful version of the Thelonious Monk ballad "Ask Me
Now." And so on.
The afternoon started slowly. Wessell Anderson, the alto
saxophonist, led a quartet playing tunes associated with
Parker; Mr. Anderson made round, handsome lines that curved
up into long tones, while his pianist, Sascha Perry,
hammered out laconic, percussive Bud Powell-style
accompaniment. The singer Carla Cook used a straightforward
talent through a wide repertory with a remarkable lack of
airs: the set encompassed nimble scatting (in the Eddie
Jefferson song "Oh Gee"), R&B, a jazz samba and gospel.
But the third of four sets jolted the crowd. The
saxophonists Sonny Fortune, Vincent Herring and Gary Bartz
performed as the Three Altos - a simple enough concept, and
they didn't need more than simple. With Mr. Hart on drums,
Ronnie Mathews on piano and Cecil McBee on bass, the group
tore through bebop, making it the stunning, spangling thing
it can be.
Each player staked out a different relationship to the
music. Mr. Fortune played with an exciting,
near-antagonistic ferocity, occasionally letting out
reed-squeaks as he unloaded. Mr. Herring played with a
lovely, supple tone, several steps sweeter than Parker's,
letting you hear bebop's rhythmic subdivisions in a nearly
classical replication. Mr. Bartz's demeanor lay somewhere
in between, playing bop language into original solo ideas
without thundering or overstuffing.