‘Bird With Strings: Ken Peplowski Quartet & Orchestra with Guest Terell Stafford’
Birdland
Through August 26

30th Annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
Marcus Garvey Park, August 26
Tompkins Square Park August 27

‘Bird Lives!’
Dizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Through August 27

What should have been one of the biggest centennial celebrations in jazz history — the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charlie Parker was in 2020 — was, alas, ruined by the pandemic. Still, for years now, at least three major organizations — Birdland, Dizzy’s, and the weekend-long al fresco Charlie Parker Jazz Festival — have been presenting ambitious Bird Birthday events at the end of August.

The music that Parker played with a string background, mostly recorded in 1949, is a natural for such celebrations. At the time, hardcore bebop fans accused Parker of “selling out” — whatever that might mean — as if the very idea of creating a kind of music that somebody other than a hardcore bebop fan might enjoy somehow compromised its worth.

In perspective, the “with strings” format may have been Parker’s last great gift to the world. It had been tried to a degree before — principally by big band leaders like Tommy Dorsey and especially Artie Shaw — but after Parker, the idea caught on in a big way, when dozens of major soloists made string albums.  

The case could be made that some of those later albums built on Parker’s foundation executed the idea better than Parker and his producer, Norman Granz, did in those pioneering, 78-era sessions. At least four later alto saxophonists, Benny Carter, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley, and Art Pepper, made string albums that benefited from improved recording technology and more consistently good charts. 

Yet the “Bird With Strings” material has acquired a mystique of its own — not least because they are the only jazz-with-strings charts that are regularly performed live, even by Parker himself. I’ve heard them at least a half-dozen times, most frequently at Birdland. 

In 2012, the contemporary composer and violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson took that material and rearranged into it a wholly new, highly contemporary suite for alto saxophone and strings, much like Jason Moran has done more recently with the music of James Reese Europe.  

A year ago, the saxophonist Ken Peplowski presented an exemplary performance of the “Bird With Strings” material, fittingly at the jazz shrine named after Parker, Birdland. When it was announced that Mr. Peplowski was coming back this week for the 2023 Parker birthday event, I assumed it would be the same material. 

As with last year, his co-star is the outstanding trumpeter Terell Stafford. The rhythm section is pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Willie Jones III. In addition to which, Loren Schoenberg conducts an eight-piece ensemble of Rose Kow, Tia Allen, and Yoonjung Hwang, violins; Kayla Williams, viola; Robin Park, cello; Elizabeth Steiner, harp; and Keve Wilson, oboe.

Last year’s show was top drawer, but this week’s Bird birthday bash is something else entirely. Instead of the classic “Bird With Strings” pieces immortalized on record, and which concert goers have heard before, this year’s program is a remarkable gathering of arrangements that Parker commissioned for the “strings” project but never recorded.

Some of these new charts are standard ballads, like “I Cover the Waterfront,” in the spirit of most of the 23 or so songs that he famously did record. There also was a lovely treatment of “Gone with the Wind,” arranged for Parker by John Lewis, later of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and versions of “You Go to My Head” and “Star Dust” that were at least as good as anything that made it onto the original albums.

Yet the real gold here was a series of mostly original works by jazz composers, such as “I Dream of You” by Earl “Fatha” Hines, “Gold Rush” by Gerry Mulligan, and “Moon Mist,” a relatively obscure but lovely slice of Ellingtonia credited to Duke’s son, Mercer. 

The gem of the evening was “Ezz-Thetic,” a very far out piece by master theorist George Russell. First recorded by Miles Davis and Lee Konitz in 1951, this piece is, in the best bebop tradition, roughly based on standard changes (“Love for Sale”). This is the most far-afield work in the “Bird With strings” repertory. Where most of the ballads place Parker in the proximity of mainstream pop music, George Russell’s compositions are much closer to a true hybrid of jazz with 20th century classical music, what was later deemed third stream.

Messrs. Peplowski and Stafford also treated us to several small group numbers, including the Parker perennials “Wee” and “Cherokee.” Mr. Stafford shined on his own features as well, particularly the well-known Parker arrangement of “Summertime.” Both front liners were playing extremely well; Mr. Stafford is a trumpeter whom I always want to hear more of, and Mr. Peplowski has long proffered a highly individual attractive sound both on clarinet and tenor saxophone.  

Mr. Peplowski, currently in remission from multiple myeloma, was playing at the top of his form last month at the 92NY’s Jazz in July, though he only had the chance to play clarinet that night. At Birdland, switching between both horns, he sounded even better.

As a kind of a non-Parker bonus, Mr. Peplowksi and the ensemble also played a string arrangement by Mark Lopeman, a regular member of Vince Giordano’s sax section, of Michel Legrand’s “You Must Believe in Spring.” Then he followed with the earliest item in the “Bird With Strings” chronology, Neal Hefti’s 1947 “Repetition.”   

This too is a fascinating composition for big band, string section, and saxophone soloist, one that swings mightily even as it wades into the third stream. Mr. Peplowski observed that, as befits the title, this was the only work reprised from last year. Some things are worth repeating.