EARLY “BIRD” SPECIAL!

Mark your calendars. Jazz is back. August is the month for jazz in and around Tompkins Square Park. 

“In” because on the afternoon of August 24, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival will play Tompkins for the 32nd year, setting up stage in the heart of the park, just by the towering Krishna Tree. 

“Around” because the main event is book-ended by two jazz gigs that have fast become lively additions to the Parker festivities. 

• At 5.30 p.m. on the evening of August 20th, a group of Latin jazz maestros will perform in the El Sol Brillante Community Garden on East 12th street between Avenues B and C.
• Immediately following the main event in the park, on the 24^th,  jazz fans can make the short hop one block east to the Nublu jazz club on Avenue C, between East 9th and East 10^th, for a “Make Jazz Trill Again” jam session. This high-energy evening of improv to which all are invited (details of both events below) brings to a close one of the great musical extravaganzas not only in the world of jazz, but on the entire New York City arts calendar. 

The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival centers on Tompkins Square Park because Parker lived opposite the east side of the park, at 151 Avenue C, from 1950 to ’54, the last four years of his life. A plaque now marks the spot. 

Parker was born, however, in Kansas City, and it was there that he acquired his “Bird” nickname, that itself shortened from his childhood moniker “Yardbird.”  As the young Parker’s legend grew, the saxophonist became such a fixture in New York jazz circles—he and Dizzy Gillespie invented the staccato, “be-bop” style of playing—that his nickname became synonymous with the city. To many jazz performers, composers, and aficionados, New York still is known as “Birdland.” A jazz club bearing the Birdland name exists to this day. 

The Festival began in 1993, when a group of NYC jazz enthusiasts decided to honor Parker’s local legacy by staging a concert in Tompkins featuring musicians who had played with Bird. In 2002, after funding was drying up in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it became part of the City Parks Foundation’s “Summerstage” outdoor music program. 

Summerstage revitalized the Parker, expanding it eventually to an eight-day celebration in both Harlem (Marcus Garvey Park mainly) and the East Village. The first significant additions were “Jazz in the Garden” concerts, of which the El Sol Brillante is one. Says Ariana Fetterman, whose company Ariana’s List has arranged these gigs from the start (working with producer Paula Abreu as well as the Jazz Foundation of America), “We loved the Charlie Parker, but we knew that the heart of traditional jazz in New York is in Harlem, and that’s where the Jazz in the Garden began.” (This year’s gig sees  Annette St. John playing in the Harlem Rose Garden at 5 East 129^th street on the evening of August 22^nd.) “But we knew that Latin jazz has a tremendous heritage in the Lower East Side and East Village, and also that most of the audience in Tompkins Square Park comes from out of town, or at least farther away, so we decided we should work on local awareness by holding Latin jazz concerts in local public spaces that would include local jazz musicians.”

One such musician was New Yorker George Braith, a saxophonist with West Indian heritage who performed in 2018, the event’s second year. Braith put on a show memorable not only for musicianship but also for his musical instrument: Braith had invented the “Braithophone” by joining two soprano saxophones together and playing them at the same time through a single mouthpiece!

In 2021, the Garden gig moved from 6BC, its original venue, up the Ave to El Sol Brillante. “We’d just outgrown the space,” says Fetterman. It was an immediate hit. First to grace El Sol was Willie Martinez and his Latin Jazz Collective. Writing in AMNew York, veteran East Village photojournalist Bob Krasner described how Brooklyn-born drummer Martinez and his band, “put their own spin on world-class renditions of tunes associated with Parker such as ‘Night In Tunisia’, ‘Caravan’ and ‘Body and Soul’.

“The night was hot,” Krasner added. “Space was limited and the mosquitos were in attack mode, but the garden thoughtfully provided bug spray and the music was so good that those left standing stayed until the end. All in all, a perfect East Village summer evening.”

Playing El Sol this year will be percussionist Pablo “El Indio” Rosario (above), another Brooklyn native but who moved to Puerto Rico as a teen. There are few Latin Jazz musicians “Pablito” has not performed with, including Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Ruben Blades, Willie Colon and perhaps his most frequent bandmate, Mongo Santamaria. But if you look closely, you also will find him in the sleeve-note credits for albums by David Bowie and The Young Rascals. Pablito will be bringing both experience and enthusiasm to El Sol.

The “Make Jazz Trill Again” jam session is another animal altogether. Jam sessions are hardly new, but the Nublu nights are the creation of two young female jazz musicians on a mission to put a younger, more progressive spin on the genre: Vocalist/flautist/producer Melanie Charles, and Grammy-nominated saxophonist Yuni “YunieMo” Mohica. 

“Trill” (for those unfamiliar with the term, such as yours truly), means a combo of “truth” and “chill.” If past Jams are anything to by—they began in 2022—then trill also could mean fun, free-flowing and wholly in the spirit of the music it seeks to, well, make trill again.

Charles and YunieMo already have a plan. Charles has three solo albums to her name and has performed a Tiny Desk concert for NPR and has developed a soulful jazz sound which sometimes hints at her Haitian background. She and YunieMo also host a “Make Jazz Trill Again” podcast from Nublu, featuring female artists talking jazz. “It’s for the streets, it’s for the people and it’s to dance to,” they say of their efforts. “It’s anti-institutional.” 

This is the fourth year of the Jam. “Melanie’s aim,” explains YunieMo, “has been to create a safe space for a jam session, sort of as an after-party for those who can walk over from Tompkins Square Park right after the main Charlie Parker concert, and for all other who enjoy a jam session, either listening or playing.”