Recording of the Week, WDR Big Band, 'Birth of a Bird: Celebrating the Music of Charlie Parker'

Not to start out a review with perhaps the most pointless statement I’ve put to ‘paper’ in my time at Presto, but there are few players who have quite eclipsed the lineage of jazz saxophonists quite like Charlie Parker. Aside from his prowess with the instrument, Parker – or ‘Yardbird’ and later simply ‘Bird’, as he was known – helped solidify the idea of jazz as contemporary art, and the people who played it as studied intellectuals; it’s also thanks to Parker that folks like Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler grew into the influential players that they did. In his short lifetime of less than 35 years, Parker achieved an enviable status that sees him still cited among even today’s youngest saxophone players’ inspirations. Only two years ago marked the Yardbird centenary, and with a wealth of tributes pouring out for the influential saxophonist, the latest comes to us from the venerable WDR Big Band Cologne, spearheaded by conductor and arranger Michael Abene. Though plans for a concert were cut short by COVID-19 in 2020, the band instead opted to go for a live studio recording, resulting in Birth of a Bird releasing this month.

Pictured: Luigi Grasso (Photo by Marc Ribes)

Setting out to do any kind of Parker tribute carries a heavy weight; when a figure looms so large over the culture as a whole, how do you do them justice? And more so, how do you make such a recording stand out? Parker’s music itself also produced some unique challenges for Abene, having been composed with small bebop groups in mind - translating these tunes for big band is no easy task, but Birth of a Bird presents an excellent case study in how to go about it. It’s not exactly like Abene had much material to draw from, either, recordings featuring Parker’s material accompanied by big band are few and far between. Besides the WDR band themselves, there are two highlighted soloists on Birth of a Bird – lead altoist Johan Hörlén and Luigi Grasso – but each of the band members get a moment of their own; while you’ll hear Hörlén on ‘The Gypsy’, Grasso takes the lead on ‘Embraceable You’, with Karolina Strassmeyer on ‘Yardbird Suite’ and baritonist Jens Neufang appearing on the final track ‘Segment’.

Selections include the aforementioned iconic ‘Yardbird Suite’ which no Parker tribute can omit, with a real scorcher of a solo from Strassmeyer. Grasso and Hörlén’s solos duel throughout the opening of ‘Chi-Chi’ before a whole section comes in for a discordant take on the lead melody - a bold start for sure, but it means the record hits the ground running. Much of the arrangements tend to favour the core jazz combo for improvisatory passages, with the rest of the band chiming in to accent parts or returning triumphantly to the head melody. Interestingly, Abene’s arrangement of ‘Embraceable You’ takes some cues from the 1947 recording by Parker by eschewing the main theme altogether and improvising around it at first, only returning to the recognisable lead melody when the full band comes in. And it’s not just the horn players that get to enjoy the spotlight; ‘Ornithology’ features an intro interspersed with drummer Hans Dekker’s tasteful stickwork, while the ballads would be incomplete without pianist Belly Test’s careful accompaniment.

Birth of a Bird is no doubt one for those with more old-school-leaning tastes; the modern landscape of jazz seldom sees big band recordings. Abene’s full, meaty arrangements are only bolstered further by the crisp recording quality, and you’ll hear the full force of one of Germany’s premier big bands throughout. So to answer the question “how does one pull off a Charlie Parker tribute?” – with some damn good players and a solid selection of some of his best material.