'Charlie Parker's Yardbird': His elusive score

Lawrence Brownlee (left) sings the part of jazz great Charlie Parker, with Rachel Sterrenberg as Chan and Will Liverman as Dizzy Gillespie in Opera Philadelphia's production of "Charlie Parker's Yardbird." DOMINIC M. MERCIER

Peter Dobrin, Inquirer Classical Music Critic
Posted: Sunday, May 31, 2015, 3:01 AM
Things you will hear in Charlie Parker's Yardbird when it has its Opera Philadelphia world premiere Friday night: a reference to Stravinsky and a musical quote from Beethoven, the flavor of the Great American Songbook, and street-cool jazz harmonies so modern they really occupy the haze between jazz and avant-garde classical.

What you won't hear is any material from Parker's magnum opus, a work for large orchestra. The jazzman, nicknamed Yardbird, never was able to write it, and it is his pursuit of the chimera that forms the dramatic backbone of this new chamber opera.

Even for geniuses, the grass is always greener, and Charlie Parker's Yardbird offers its main character something of a shot at resolution, if not redemption. The action after his death in 1955 at age 34 - just a few more years than Schubert got - follows his spirit.

"I'm going to write a score! I can hear the music in my head, feel it in my heart!" sings Parker to a Middle Eastern melodic line. "A full orchestra singing beautifully . . ." Here, a piano and slide whistle alight on his wish with quick, high birdsong.

Birds caged and freed figure prominently in the piece. The opera, with music by composer/saxophonist Daniel Schnyder and libretto by playwright Bridgette A. Wimberly, is not a straight biographical account of a tragic surrender to heroin, or the story of bebop and other breakthroughs during jazz's great, explosive period of innovation. Rather, Parker's post-death quest to write a full-orchestra piece becomes a vehicle for revisiting characters from his past - his wives, Dizzy Gillespie, jazz patroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter, and others. It is about progressions both personal and chordal.

"He had no formal education in music, so the whole thing about an orchestra and writing for that many instruments was probably beyond his scope," said Harlem-based Wimberly. "In the 34 years that he was here, he said he had learned to write for one voice, certainly not a full orchestra, and then as it goes on we see the difficulty of him doing it.

"In the end, he didn't write an orchestra piece, and we weren't going to have him write a false one. But I feel that what he passed on was that he inspired so many people to create, he opened up the doors, he set the birds free, the people free, the music free, like with what he did with the blues. What he did for jazz itself was allow others to do what he was not able to do in his lifetime."

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/peter_dobrin/20150531__Charlie_Parker_s_Yardbird___His_elusive_score.html#47Rvmx6J2uzFephh.99