{"id":16421,"date":"2017-03-25T16:01:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T21:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=16421"},"modified":"2017-03-26T21:21:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T02:21:00","slug":"charlie-parkers-yardbird-richly-explores-life-talented-tormented-musical-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=16421","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Charlie Parker\u2019s Yardbird’ Richly Explores Life of Talented, Tormented Musical Genius"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Peter Thomas Ricci<\/p>\n

Charlie Parker was no mere jazz saxophonist. One of the founders of jazz\u2019s bebop movement, he brought a virtuosity to the American art form that had never been seen, and in the process revolutionized not only jazz, but American music in its totality. As Miles Davis succinctly put it, \u201cYou can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker.\u201d Or as Charles Mingus titled one his compositions, \u201c<\/span>If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats.\u201d<\/p>\n

To take on such a titanic musical personality \u2013 and in a separate genre of music, no less \u2013 is an act of ambition that must be saluted, and librettist Bridgette A. Wimberly and composer Daniel Schnyder have tackled the subject with great passion and focus in \u201cCharlie Parker\u2019s Yardbird,\u201d an expansive opera of the saxophonist\u2019s life that is being performed just two times here in Chicago under Lyric Opera\u2019s\u00a0Unlimited<\/i>\u00a0series.<\/p>\n

Set on the night of Parker\u2019s death at 34, \u201cYardbird\u201d is set in a purgatory, one where Parker (played by the wonderful tenor Lawrence Brownlee) is gleefully devoid of all the ailments that plagued him in life \u2013 heroin addiction, alcoholism, cirrhosis, depression, and infidelity, to name just several. Dressed in a crisp suit and in fine spirits, he begins working on the orchestral compositions he never had the chance to write while alive, but those same demons continue to haunt him in the afterlife.<\/p>\n

Using that purgatory as a launching pad \u2013 one that is marvelously designed by Riccardo Hernandez \u2013 Wimberly and Schnyder touch upon many aspects of Parker\u2019s life across the opera\u2019s 90 minutes, including the love of his mother Addie, his complicated relationships with three of his four wives, and most movingly, his musical equal and partner Dizzy Gillespie. The cast is uniformly excellent, with Angela Brown\u2019s Addie, Will Liverman\u2019s Gillespie, and Rachel Sterrenberg\u2019s Chan (Parker\u2019s fourth and final wife) in particularly fine form. And as always, Lyric\u2019s instrumentalists are pure perfection, and under the steady direction of Kelly Kuo, they weave their way through Schnyder\u2019s dark, jazzy music.<\/p>\n

And as if the strength of the opera were not enough, the Lyric ended the night with a superlative jazz set, which featured members of Orbert Davis\u2019 Chicago Jazz Philharmonic. Featuring the lyrical Rajiv Halim Orozco on alto sax, the ensemble also included the air-tight rhythm section of Junius Paul on bass and Clif Wallce on drums, and for the set\u2019s first half \u2013 gorgeous renditions of \u201cApril in Paris\u201d and \u201cSummertime\u201d \u2013 the sound was bolstered further by a string quartet and oboe\/English horn. Perhaps my favorite moment of the whole evening, though, came at the midway point, when Angela Brown (changed from her opera garb) accompanied Orozco on an exquisite composition set to Wimberly\u2019s poetry, which crafted stanzas from the names of popular Parker songs; it was an air of mystery and wonder that only live jazz can create, and served as a most perfect tribute to Parker\u2019s genius.<\/p>\n

==============================================================================================================<\/p>\n

\u2018Charlie Parker\u2019s Yardbird\u2019 is playing March 26, 2 p.m. at the Harris Theater, 20 E. Randolph, Chicago<\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Tickets are available at\u00a0harristheaterchicago.org\/yardbird<\/a>, or at 312-334-7777.<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Peter Thomas Ricci Charlie Parker was no mere jazz saxophonist. One of the founders of jazz\u2019s bebop movement, he brought a virtuosity to the American art form that had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,245,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-features","category-musical-theatre","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}