Dr. Lonnie Smith is one of the headliners at this years Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
Marcus Garvey Park and Tompkins Square Park
August 21-23, free
www.cityparksfoundation.org
The annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is always a bittersweet affair. The sweet part is three days of free music this year, up from the usual two. The bitter part is that it always comes near the end of the summer season, with Labor Day and school right around the corner. But let’s not worry about that now and instead concentrate on the free concerts at the twenty-second edition, which is part of the CityParks Foundation SummerStage program and begins August 21 at 6:00 in Marcus Garvey Park with Oliver Lake Big Band performing a special commission, the King Solomon Hicks Trio, and Michela Taps: Bird Lives! (“[Parker] was such an innovator and a driving force in this music, as well as an important influence on tap,” tap-dance star Michela Marino Lerman said in a statement. “We hope to contribute, in some way, to his tremendous legacy.”) On Saturday starting at 3:00, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Andy Bey, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Camille Thurman, and Norma Miller will be in Marcus Garvey Park (preceded at 2:00 by a master class taught by Samuel Coleman). And on Sunday at 3:00, Charlie Parker’s lasting influence will be honored in Tompkins Square Park with Rudresh Mahanthappa: Bird Calls, Joe Lovano, Myra Melford: Snowy Egret, and Michael Mwenso.
Carmen & Geoffrey is an endearing look at Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder’s lifelong love affair with dance — and each other. The New Orleans-born de Lavallade studied with Lester Horton and went to high school with Alvin Ailey, whom she brought to his first dance class. Best known as a pitchman for 7UP (the “uncola”) and playing the intriguing Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die, Trinidadian Holder was a larger-than-life gentle giant who was a dancer, choreographer, composer, costume designer, actor, stage director, writer, photographer, painter, and just about anything else he wanted to be. The two met when they both were cast in Truman Capote and Harold Arlen’s Broadway show House of Flowers in 1954, with Holder instantly falling in love with de Lavallade; they remained together until Holder’s death this past October at the age of eighty-four. Directors Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob combine amazing archival footage — of Eartha Kitt, Josephine Baker, Ulysses Dove, de Lavallade dancing with Ailey, and other splendid moments — with contemporary rehearsal scenes, dance performances, and interviews with such stalwarts as dance critic Jennifer Dunning, former Alvin Ailey artistic director Judith Jamison, and choreographer Joe Layton (watch out for his eyebrows), along with family members and Gus Solomons jr, who still works with de Lavallade, and Dudley Williams, who just died last month. The film was made on an extremely low budget, and it shows, but it is filled with such glorious footage that you’ll get over that quickly. Carmen & Geoffrey, along with additional rare archival footage, is screening August 1 as part of the free Lincoln Center Out of Doors program “A Celebration of the Life of Geoffrey Holder” and will be preceded by the panel discussion “The Life and Work of Geoffrey Holder” with Doob and Atkinson, moderated by Leo Holder, Geoffrey and de Lavallade’s son. Fans should also check out the new exhibition 