Is Jazz Entering Another Dance Era? At the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, at Least, It Seems So

The Charlie Parker Jazz FestivalThrough August 25(Other Outdoor Jazz Events Through September 7)Near the end of the big band era, something curious started happening: The great jazz orchestras remained overwhelmingly popular, and they still spent the vast majority of their time criss-crossing the country to play in one large ballroom after another. Even the more moderately popular bands — not just the superstars — could command huge crowds of dancers wherever they played, at least in the thousands; Swifty Lazar and other Hollywood agents remember this as a moment when it was much more profitable to represent bands than it was actors. Musicians say it was around 1945 that small subsets of the audiences began to gather around the bands. The majority of the crowd would keep dancing, but the idea that even a few dozen people would just stand and listen was astonishing to everyone.We know from the perspective of a later era that this was the real beginning of big band jazz as concert music rather than dance music; it became the predominant strain in the music, and that has lasted for 70 years or so. Something remarkable happened at the Charlie Parker Festival on Friday night. I arrived expecting the usual sit-down concert, which has been the norm for jazz events during all of my long experience as a listener. Indeed, the biggest outdoor jazz event in New York, the annual Charlie Parker Festival is named for the musician who did more than any other to transform jazz into a listening music.Yet a sizeable portion of the thousand or so people present refused to stay in their seats: chalk this up to the location, at Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park — a short walk from the historic site of the legendary Home of Happy Feet, the Savoy Ballroom, for 30 years the dance capital of the known universe. Mostly, though, it was the music: The bassist and bandleader, Christian McBride, brought forth his 17-piece big band, and on this surprisingly cool and comfortable August night the assembled multitudes couldn’t help but move.The evening began on a somber note, with Jazzmobile’s Robin Bell-Stevens acknowledging the passing, earlier that day, of a great man in the jazz community, the now-legendary guitarist Russell Malone, who apparently died of a heart attack at only 60 while on tour; the full details haven’t yet been made public. From there, the opening set, by trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr. and his quartet, was a jubilant one. Mr. Roney and his drum-playing cousin Kojo – who played at the park last Friday- are both the very picture of millennial jazzmen. Friday night’s set paid allegiance to the genres and subgenres that both of Mr. Roney’s parents, the trumpeter Wallace Roney Sr. and the pianist-composer Geri Allen, were most comfortable in: a mix of hard bop, modal music, and occasional free-form flights.The quartet essayed works by Wayne Shorter, “Over Shadow Hill Way,” Dexter Gordon, his 1979 arrangement of Harold Arlen’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” and Lenny White’s “Guernica.” This is an aggressive and hard-hitting but tightly focused quartet, with pianist Victor Gould, bassist Paul Beaudry, and drummer Terreon Gully.The audience members enjoyed the Roney set, and even before it ended, they began massing at both sides of the concert space — the bleachers — knowing what to expect. Ever the showman, Mr. McBride makes a point, in the best James Brown tradition, to give us a big entrance after the band has already started playing. There was only a tiny space between the front row and the stage, but it was immediately packed with dozens upon dozens of dancers; there was so little room up front that only the most slender of terpsichoreans could take advantage of it. For those of us lucky enough to be seated in the first few rows, though, it was an appropriate visual spectacle to match the music.The band started with “Shake ’n’ Blake,” named for a tenor saxophone soloist, Ron Blake. In the tradition of Oscar Pettiford’s “Tricotism,” it was an uptempo, bright, and boppy piece that put the leader’s bassistry front-and-center. Next it was Mr. McBride’s turn to pay homage to Russell Malone, his friend — let’s face it, Russell Malone was everybody’s friend — and frequent collaborator. Mr. McBride selected an original work for jazz orchestra, dedicated to Rosa Parks, that he had also recorded as a duet with Malone, “Sister Rosa.” This was a suitably serious piece to honor the civil rights icon, but it was more than rhythmic enough to provide the dancers with a wholly different vibe: a more romantic and meditative melody expressed by trombonist Steve Davis and Mr. Blake on soprano. It had a 1970s kind of texture, reminiscent of Thad Jones or Sammy Nestico.The band’s vocalist, Melissa Walker, who is married to Mr. McBride, then took the stage. Like her husband, she is a talented crowd-pleaser. The only thing wrong with her three-song mini-set was that the engineers, wanting to make sure that she could be heard above the 13 horns, turned her mic up way too far, and the resultant volume really punished our ears.This was a shame, as the singing and the arrangements were all excellent, starting with Marv Jenkins’s “Big City,” which most of us know from the 1964 Cannonball Adderley-Ernie Andrews “Live Session,” and finishing with a hard-swinging “Come Rain or Come Shine” — more Arlen. In between, she lovingly crooned “I’ll Close My Eyes” by the British songwriter Billy Reid and inspired by the Dinah Washington centennial. This was an inspired choice, a song heard too rarely, and her most effective moment — not least because of the technology.With his big band in particular, Mr. McBride likes to acknowledge that he was as profoundly influenced by 1960s and ’70s style funk as he was by jazz, James Brown and Maceo Parker in particular. He usually plays at least one of these numbers per set, telling us that he likes jazz with a little funk in it and funk with a little jazz in it. Switching to fender bass, he gave us a big band arrangement of the 1975 “Africano / Power” by Earth, Wind & Fire, and by this point even the majority of the people in the seated area were on their feet. The band’s guitarist played a solo, mostly in single notes, and I couldn’t help thinking that he, like the rest of us, had Russell Malone on his mind.When the Charlie Parker Festival first started 30 years ago, it seemed more like icing on the cake of warm weather music — the ghost of Newport in New York, the JVC jazz festival, and then the Knitting Factory Festivals and the ongoing Vision Festival were the main events. Lately, though, I’m increasingly aware that some of the best shows I’ve seen in the last few years have been at Marcus Garvey Park. The festival continues Saturday at Marcus Garvey with Carmen Lundy, Helen Sung, and Chris Potter, among others, and Sunday afternoon at Tompkins Square Park with Louis Hayes, SuperBlue with Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter, and Ekep Nkwelle, among others. There’s also a related concert I’m looking forward to on September 7, with singer Allan Harris, Burnt Sugar, and more on the Sugar Hill Luminaries Lawn on West 155th Street.After petitioning the promoter for another five minutes to work with, Mr. McBride ended the concert on a purely hard-bop note with Freddie Hubbard’s powerful “Thermo,” which the bassist had performed with the late trumpeter many times. The piece built to a rousing acoustic solo by the leader, and we all were sent on our way home from the park feeling that we had not just been to another concert, but a true experience, a real happening.

Is Jazz Entering Another Dance Era? At the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, at Least, It Seems So

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