City Parks
Foundation is proud to announce the 25th Anniversary celebration of the Charlie
Parker Jazz Festival. The festival is New York City's annual salute to the
legendary late saxophonist, featuring storied veteran players as well as young
jazz musicians who continue to shape and drive the art form. This year's
festival runs August 23 through August 27 at parks and venues around Manhattan
and will include free concerts, artist discussions, a film screening, and for
the first time in the festival's history, a dedicated evening of dance.
"We are thrilled to celebrate 25 years of the beloved
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival," said Heather Lubov, Executive Director of
City Parks Foundation. "In honor of this milestone we have expanded the
program to 5 days, partnered with local institutions on family jazz events and
open jam sessions, and are presenting a full evening of dance on the lineup for
the first time. We hope all New Yorkers, young and old, jazz aficionados and
new fans alike will join us in honoring the legacy of Charlie Parker and jazz
in New York City."
The festival kicks off on Wednesday, August 23 at The New
School for Jazz and Contemporary Music with "Bird With Strings," a
tribute performance featuring an ensemble of students and veteran jazz players
honoring Parker's 1950 recording, Charlie Parker With Strings.
On Thursday, August 24, the festival heads uptown to Marcus
Garvey Park in Harlem for Jason Samuels Smith's Chasin' The Bird Remixed, an
added evening of programming in honor of the 25th Anniversary, and the first
full evening of dance in the festival's history. Emmy award-winning tap dance
virtuoso, Jason Samuels Smith, and Broadway veterans, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards
and Derick K. Grant, bring Parker's music to life through dance in this special
performance featuring live music.
The festival continues in Marcus Garvey Park on Friday,
August 25 with world-renowned clarinet player & saxophonist Anat Cohen, who
will lead a consortium of strings, horns, percussion, and keyboards with her
jazz-folk troupe, and Camille Thurman, a multi-talented saxophonist, flutist and
vocalist.
On Saturday afternoon, veteran alto-saxophonist player Lee
Konitz, a contemporary of Charlie Parker when bebop came on the scene, will
perform with his quartet in Marcus Garvey Park joined by drumming prodigy and
pioneering female percussionist Terri Lyne Carrington, one of the most recorded
jazz drummers of all time Louis Hayes (who has played with the likes of John
Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Cannonball Adderley), and rising vocalist
Charenee Wade, a brave new voice on the modern jazz frontier intent on using
her gift to address social change.
On Sunday, August 27, the festival travels back downtown to
the place where it all began, Tompkins Square Park, home to the inaugural
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in 1993, and located just blocks away from Charlie
Parker's home in the East Village. Joshua Redman, one of the most important
contemporary horn players and widely considered to be the top sax man of his
generation, will make his Charlie Parker Jazz Festival debut. NEA Jazz Master
Lou Donaldson, revered by many as one the greatest alto saxophonists of all
time; saxophone virtuosa Tia Fuller, one of the world's best jazz
multi-instrumentalists, full-time professor and one-time member of the
all-female band that toured with Beyoncé; and vocalist Alicia Olatuja, who
performed with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir at President Obama's second
inauguration and has been in high demand ever since, will also perform to close
out the final day of the festival.
In honor of the 25th Anniversary, City Parks Foundation has
also partnered with local institutions to present free and open-to-the-public
jazz events around the city. Events include an all ages Family Jazz Party with
Festival performer Charenee Wade and a "Harlem Speaks" interview with
Lee Konitz at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, a screening at The New School
of the 2016 film, I Called Him Morgan, about the life and tragic death of jazz
musician Lee Morgan, live jazz in the gardens at The Harlem Rose Garden and 6BC
Botanical Garden, and jam sessions at Gin Fizz Harlem and Ginny's Supper Club.
The complete Charlie Parker Jazz Festival schedule follows
or can be found on the City Parks Foundation website here: Charlie Parker Jazz
Festival
Twitter: @SummerStage
Instagram: @SummerStage
Facebook: SummerStage NYC
Snapchat: summerstagenyc
Official Hashtag: #SummerStage
City Parks Foundation (CPF) is the only independent,
nonprofit organization whose mission is to offer programs in public parks
throughout the five boroughs of New York City. At CPF, we are dedicated to
invigorating and transforming parks into dynamic, vibrant centers of urban life
through sports, arts, community development and education programs for all New
Yorkers. Our programs and community building initiatives — located in more than
350 parks, recreation centers and public schools across New York City — reach
425,000 people each year. Our ethos is simple: we believe thriving parks mean
thriving communities.
No comments:
Post a Comment