KCYJ 12:30 Combo to Study Bird and Bobby

KCYJ 12:30 Combo to Study Bird and Bobby

The Kansas City metro area is historically significant to modern music and is well known worldwide for being one of the significant centers for jazz music. Every professional saxophone player who is based out of Kansas City can play – no, really… The saxophone tradition here mandates this standard. Regardless of the style of jazz or improvised music you play on your saxophone, you best be bringing something if you want to play and be taken seriously in Kansas City…

I believe that it is very important to continually study Charlie Parker‘s melodies and chord sequences with the KCYJ 12:30 Combo students. Charlie Parker’s music is important because it is an addition to the jazz tradition. Mr. Parker took what was the standard in jazz music during his time and added something new to it in terms of the raw materials used to create the music. He extended the language by using scales and chords in both, harmonic and melodic ways that had not been done before. And, of equal significance, Charlie Parker was the first true virtuoso of the jazz alto saxophone. Mr. Parker’s technical mastery of the instrument allowed him the facility to play it in a manner that had never been done in jazz before his time.
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ACCEPTING DOWNBEAT AWARD
Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie play “Hot House”

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Unlike most classical or repertory music, modern jazz and improvised music are intended to progress and develop as time goes by, not remain the same. This development and continuation of the learning process, is an important part of developing one’s artistry as a musician. I don’t believe that there is any musician still living and actually playing in the Kansas City metro area today who actually knew Charlie Parker personally. However, numerous musicians and scholars now appreciate and understand the importance of Charlie Parker’s music in the context of it having shaped every style of popular music that came after it historically.

LEADING FIGURES IN MODERN KANSAS CITY JAZZ SAXOPHONE
GENERATIONS: CHARLIE PARKER > BOBBY WATSON > WHO’S NEXT?

Since I am a native of the Kansas City metro area and a professional saxophonist by trade, the music of both, Charlie Parker and Bobby Watson have long been a part of my recorded and print music collections. Learning the music of Charlie Parker is a required course of instruction for any jazz musician or improviser who wishes to approach traditional and modern music beyond the typically brief survey. I think that we must now also include Bobby Watson in this requisite musical context for those who practice and study any aspect of jazz today.
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Bobby Watson playing Ay Carumba w/ “Live and Learn”
Recorded live in Italy on 10/24/2009 | Bobby Watson – Alto, Philip Dizack – Trumpet, Warren Wolf – Vibes, Harold O’Neal – Piano, Curtis Lundy – Bass, Quincy Davis – Drums

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The importance of Bobby Watson as a modern virtuoso jazz alto saxophonist (and I personally consider him to musically be the “Bird” figure of our times,) is often seemingly overlooked and almost taken for granted for the most part. Perhaps because he is diversely talented and has been fortunate to have been able to realize significant initiatives in the areas of education and composition throughout the course of his distinguished career as well. Since returning home to the Kansas City metro, I have gotten to know Professor Watson a bit personally and find him to be one of the sincerest and most genuine people on the scene here.

When I called Professor Watson to tell him that the KCYJ 12:30 Combo was going to begin studying some of his music toward performing it at our Spring Concert in May, he agreed to come over to the Kansas City Youth Jazz rehearsal studios to do a clinic and master class on the music. He was excited to do it.

I thought that was cool and know that the students will benefit greatly from interacting with an artist of this elite class …
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STUDY MATERIALS MR. BURNETT RECOMMENDS
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CHARLIE (“BIRD”) PARKER

Volume 6–Charlie Parker – All Bird (Book + CD)
Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long Series (Author)

Product Description: Intermediate/advanced level. This set contains the essence of modern music and is considered by most musicians to be some of the most important music of this century. Bebop is the music of the future! Ten Charlie Parker songs that truly represent the Bebop Era. This is truly a bebop rhythm section and they make the songs sing! This is a tremendous way to learn ten songs by the master musician, Charlie Parker. The songs have all become well known jazz standards that are essential for every jazz player to know. There are blues, “Rhythm” changes, alternating latin/swing, fast, and standard 32 bar songs in this outstanding collection. Learn from the master!

ABOUT CHARLIE PARKER

Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Parker, with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, is largely considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians. Parker acquired the nickname “Yardbird” early in his career,[2] and the shortened form “Bird” remained Parker’s sobriquet for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as “Yardbird Suite”, “Ornithology” and “Bird of Paradise.”

Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure. Parker’s innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries. Several of Parker’s songs have become standards, including “Billie’s Bounce”, “Anthropology”, “Ornithology”, and “Confirmation”. He introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including a tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Although many Parker recordings demonstrate dazzling virtuosic technique and complex melodic lines – such as “Ko-Ko”, “Kim”, and “Leap Frog” – he was also one of the great blues players. His themeless blues improvisation “Parker’s Mood” represents one of the most deeply affecting recordings in jazz. At various times, Parker fused jazz with other musical styles, from classical to Latin music, blazing paths followed later by others.

Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat generation, personifying the conception of the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than just a popular entertainer. His style – from a rhythmic, harmonic and soloing perspective – influenced countless peers on every instrument.

Source: Wikipedia
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BOBBY WATSON

Volume 119: Bobby Watson (Book + CD)
Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long Series (Author)

Product Description: (Play-a-long CD with Instructional Book) 12 classic jazz compositions by the long time Jazz Messenger, alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, recorded by the stellar New York rhythm section of Edward Simon – piano, Essiet Essiet – bass and Victor Lewis – drums.

ABOUT BOBBY WATSON

A saxophonist, composer, producer and educator, Bobby Watson grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. He trained formally at the University of Miami, a school with a distinguished and well-respected jazz program. After graduating, he proceeded to earn his “doctorate” – on the bandstand — as musical director of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. The group, created in 1955 by late drummer, who died in 1990, showcased a rotating cast who eventually became consistent members of a “who’s who” of modern jazz. The Jazz Messengers, sometimes referred to as the “University of Blakey,” served as the ultimate “postgraduate school” for ambitious young players.

After completing his tenure as a Jazz Messenger (1977-1981), the gifted Watson became a much-sought after musician, working along the way with a potpourri of notable musicians, peers, elder statesmen and colleagues including, but not limited to: drummers Max Roach and Louis Hayes, fellow saxophonists George Coleman and Branford Marsalis, celebrated multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis who joined the Jazz Messengers at least in part at the suggestion of Watson. In addition to working with a variety of instrumentalists, Watson has served in a supporting roll for a number of distinguished and stylistically varied vocalists including: Joe Williams, Dianne Reeves, Lou Rawls, Betty Carter, and Carmen Lundy.

Later, in association with bassist Curtis Lundy and drummer Victor Lewis, Watson launched the first edition of Horizon, an acoustic quintet modeled in many ways after the Jazz Messengers but one with its own distinct slightly more modern twist. Horizon is now considered one of the preeminent small groups of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. The group recorded several titles for the Blue Note and Columbia record labels.

In addition to his work as leader of Horizon, Watson also led a group known as the High court of Swing (a tribute to the music of Johnny Hodges), The Grammy nominated Tailor-Made Big Band (16 pieces in all) and is a founding member of the highly acclaimed 29th Street Saxophone Quartet, an all-horn, four-piece group. Watson also wrote original music for the sound track of Robert DeNiro’s directorial debut “A Bronx Tale.”

All told, Bobby Watson, the immensely talented and now seasoned veteran has some 26 recordings as a leader. He appears on close to 100 other recordings as either co-leader or in a supporting role for other like-minded musicians. Watson has recorded more than 100 original compositions and his long-time publisher, Second Floor Music, publishes many of his original combo and big band arrangements that circulate and are interpreted on an international scope by others.

Bobby’s classic 1986 Red Records release, “Love Remains” has long been recognized by the “Penguin Guide to Jazz” with it’s highest rating and in the Penguin Guide’s seventh edition, it was identified as a part of its “core collection”, i.e. a “must-have” for any jazz aficionado along with other jazz masters such as John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington and others.

His latest project, Horizon Reassembled, was recorded for the Palmetto label; shortly after its June 2004 release, the release went to number one on the national jazz airplay chart.

Known as a tireless worker, a “team player” and a consummate musician, Bobby Watson has been a first-call musician for nearly three decades. A resident of New York for most of his professional life, Bobby served as a member of the adjunct faculty and taught private saxophone at William Patterson University from 1985-1986 and Manhattan School of Music from 1996-1999. He is currently involved with the highly acclaimed Thelonious Monk Institute’s yearly “Jazz in America” high school outreach program.

In 2000, he was approached to return to his native midwestern surroundings on the Kansas-Missouri border. Watson accepted the challenge and subsequently that same year he was selected as the first “William D. and Mary Grant/Missouri, Distinguished Professorship in Jazz Studies.” The past six years he has served as the director of jazz studies at the University of Missouri/Kansas City, Conservatory of Music although he still manages to balance live engagements throughout the world with his teaching responsibilities.

Credit: “Bobby Watson: A Brief Biographical Sketch” provided by BobbyWatson.com
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