The legacy of Charlie “Bird” Parker will be celebrated at annual free SummerStage festival
SummerStage
The New School, Marcus Garvey Park, Tompkins Square Park
August 24-28, free
www.cityparksfoundation.org
“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn,” saxophone great Charlie Parker once said. “They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” The Kansas City native, known as Bird and Yardbird, blew away all boundaries on his sax during a career that was cut short by his death in 1955 at the age of thirty-four. His legacy will once again be celebrated at the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival as part of the City Parks Foundation free SummerStage programming. This year’s tribute begins indoors on August 24 at 7:30 (free with advance RSVP here) with a screening of N. C. Heikin’s documentary Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story at the New School, followed by a Q&A with alto sax player and Morgan protégée Grace Kelly and Morgan manager Reggie Marshall. On August 25 at 7:30 (RSVP here), the New School will host a screening of Bruce Spiegel’s Bill Evans: Time Remembered, followed by a discussion with Spiegel. The live music gets cooking August 26 at 6:00 in Marcus Garvey Park with performances by Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground, Antoinette Montague, and DJ Greg Caz, followed the next day in the Harlem park by a 2:00 master class with Samuel Coleman and a 3:00 concert with the Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet, Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles, the Artistry of Jazzmeia Horn, and Charles Turner III. The festival concludes on August 28 at 3:00 in Tompkins Square Park with the great lineup of DeJohnette – Holland – Moran, Allan Harris, the Donny McCaslin Group, and Kelly.