Barry Harris Jazz Masters Concert in Baltimore

[Lois Gilbert]

Barry Harris Jazz Masters Concert in Baltimore

The Chamber Jazz Society of Baltimore Annual Jazz Masters Concert presents The Barry Harris Trio on Sunday, March 19, 2006 5 p.m at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD.

One of the major bop pianists of the last half of the twentieth century, Barry Harris is an internationally renowned performer, composer and teacher. He has received the Living Jazz Legacy award from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Association, and an American Jazz Masters Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. An exponent of the classic jazz style that was developed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Coleman Hawkins, Harris is known for his blues playing as well as his swing. He is widely recognized as a master clinician and has devoted much of his life to educating and developing future audiences for the music that is his life. Last seen here in 1999, Chamber Jazz Society is honored to present Barry Harris for its Annual Jazz Masters Concert.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, on December 15, 1929, Barry Harris was influenced by Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. Harris left Detroit for New York City in 1960.

Harris has played with Cannonball Adderley, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, and Max Roach. As a lead artist, he has recorded over 14 albums.

Harris appears in the 1989 documentary film, "Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser" (produced by Clint Eastwood). During the 1970s Harris lived with Monk and his family at the New Jersey home of the jazz patroness Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, and so was in an excellent position to comment on the last years of his fellow pianist.

In the Eighties, Harris maintained a unique institution, the Jazz Cultural Theater, in a former restaurant storefront on Eighth Ave near 23rd Street in Manhattan. There he taught group music and piano lessons, as well as hosted his own performances and those of other like-minded artists. His album "For the Moment" was recorded there.

His approach to the teaching of jazz used methods and techniques that pre-date the Berklee school and the Lydian Chromatic approach of George Russell. He relied upon the 6th chord and the 8-note, rather than seven note, jazz scale as a basis for melody and harmony. This is the material used by Bud Powell, Joseph Schillnger, George Gershwin, Glenn Miller, and even Frederic Chopin. He emphasized the concept of building a repertoire of one's own "musical movements" over common licks and phrases.

Hear the Barry Harris Trio on Sunday, March 19, 2006 5 p.m at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD.