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Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302023664
Format: Color, NTSC
ISBN: 6302023661
Label: Kultur Video
Manufacturer: Kultur Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kultur Video
Release Date: October 22, 1991
Studio: Kultur Video
Theatrical Release Date: October 22, 1991
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Editorial Review:
This 1987 film represents the first substantial documentary devoted to virtuoso saxophonist and bebop icon Charlie Parker, whose wildly inventive style and hip charisma made him a legend well before his untimely death at 34. Parker's huge, ultimately self-destructive appetites and sad demise long ago confirmed him as a poster boy for the doomed romanticism associated with the jazz life, and arguably apotheosized in a number of the bop era's most brilliant players, but while the film doesn't ignore Parker's life as a long-term heroin addict, the portrait hews more closely to exploring his creative genesis.
Through film clips, stills, and interviews with family members, musical peers, and writers, we follow Parker from his native Kansas City, Kansas, through his apprenticeship with band leaders Jay McShann and Bennie Moten, and on to New York. There, Parker would step forward as a de facto co-architect (with erstwhile partner Dizzy Gillespie, among others) of bebop, the small-group style that hot-wired swing rhythms and pop melodies with breakneck tempi, inventive harmonies, and extended improvisations, leaving behind the terra firma of swing for the high wire of a musician's music that mainstream listeners initially found daunting to follow.
Liberally scored with Parker's best-known performances, Celebrating Bird represents one of the most literate jazz documentaries extant, thanks to writer and codirector Gary Giddins, one of America's most thoughtful jazz writers, and Toby Byron, the producer behind the Masters of American Music series including The Story of Jazz. Engaging interviews with McShann, Gillespie, drummer Roy Haynes, veteran jazz writer Leonard Feather, first wife Rebecca Parker Davis, and final companion Chan Parker provide a balance of musical analysis and personal insight. For Bird's fans, this is a treat; for newly converted listeners, the story represents a keystone to the history of the music's crucial transition from swing to bop and beyond. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Hmmm...
This DVD has no special features; no Charlie Parker discography or interview, which are common features on musical documentary and/or concert DVD's nowadays, but since it didn't read anywhere that it would feature anything special I guess I shouldn't be disappointed.
I'm not a Parker junkie although I have studied his music, but this documentary didn't teach me anything new. They went through everything you've seen and heard on jazz-history TV-programs, so there weren't any surprises, but there ... Read More
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