Parker Jazz Festival Turns Up the Heat

Believe it or not, in all my years of covering jazz, I've never been to the most famous of all jazz festivals, the Newport Jazz Festival. Newport, which launched the concept of the jazz fest as an international phenomenon in the 1950s, is mounted by Festival Productions, the same organization that produces the JVC Jazz fest here in New York, which tends to feature the same lineup as the NYC fest. Not that it would be entirely unpleasant to catch these celebrated players in the posh playground for the rich, but Newport just isn't my scene. Instead of schlepping all the way up there to hobnob with a gaggle of nabobs named Muffy and Buffy, I'd rather wait two weeks and walk 10 minutes to Marcus Garvey Park for the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, where the lineup, for the past few years especially, has been very exciting and different.

The two-day Parker fest, which celebrated its 15th season this weekend, balances its headliners and its rising talent as well as it balances its geography: The Saturday show is always up in the heart of Harlem, where Parker helped invent modern jazz, and the Sunday show is down in Tompkins Square Park, where Parker (1920–55) lived for the last few years of his life. For the past two years, the Parker Fest has also balanced illness and health: Last year, the announced headliner, drum star Chico Hamilton, was too sick to perform; This year, Mr. Hamilton was scheduled again, and, thankfully, he made it. However, the star who was set to follow him, the great singer-songwriter Abbey Lincoln, wasn't able to perform in the sweltering heat.

The Saturday event opened at the height of the afternoon heat with the singer Lezlie Harrison. Although new to me, she turned out to be a very presentable, straight-ahead singer who knows how to deliver lyrics with feeling and tempo but without bending the words or the music out of shape. She also had the good sense to use a hard-driving organ combo, with Kyle Koehler on Hammond B3, Saul Rubin on guitar, and Fred Alias on drums. Ms. Harrison alternated deftly between loud, soulful numbers, ballads, and blues, paying homage to Parker on "Embraceable You" with guest star Roy Hargrove's ace obligato, and "If I Should Lose You," accompanied by Mr. Rubin, who switched to acoustic piano.

The pianist Marc Cary and his Focus Trio offered a mixed set with terrific highs. The two numbers by the pure trio (Earl Travis on bass and Sameer Gupta on drums) seemed to be all groove and no melody, and were not helped by the open-air acoustics, which left the piano sounding tinny and the electric bass sounding like a seismic vibration. But Mr. Cary redeemed himself with a fascinating slice of Indo-jazz fusion (one doesn't ordinarily hear a lot of Hindu music in Harlem), on which he played a keyboard that simulated a harmonium, Mr. Gupta played tabla, and the enchanting vocalist Samita Sinha guest-starred. Mr. Cary also offered a lovely solo treatment of Ms. Lincoln's "My Love Is You," and climaxed the set, with the help of Mr. Hargrove, on a high-voltage run through Parker's elemental blues, "Au Private."

The percussionist Chico Hamilton and his sextet, Euphoria, also offered an odd and unpredictable assortment of music. The group featured three younger players who first worked with Mr. Hamilton as mere students — the percussionist Jeremy Carlstedt, tenor saxophonist Evan Schwam, and alto saxophonist Ian Young — as well as two longtime veterans of the group: the electric bassist Paul Ramsey and the guitarist Cary DeNigris, the latter of whom carries on Mr. Hamilton's longtime tradition of using guitar rather than piano in his ensembles. Mr. Hamilton, who turns 86 this month, was in fine form despite his recent illness, though his bandstand jokes were even hoarier than those usually told by Lou Donaldson or Jon Hendricks.

Mr. Hamilton's music, which emphasized tight arrangements more than solos, was less like his chamber jazz-style albums of the 1950s and more in the funky meters of his '60s Impulse! albums such as "The Dealer." He began with a brief bossa, then offered an unusual sextet treatment of Miles Davis's "Freddie Freeloader." "My Brother Don" was a meditative, hymn-like work in several sections (at least one was in a fast 3 /4), which was followed by a funky blues reminiscent of Oliver Nelson's "Hoe Down."

Mr. Hamilton concluded with two dedications. First, for his onetime boss, Lester Young, and his original inspiration, Papa Jo Jones, he played "Thoughts of Prez," a quasi-Latin number that sounded like a melodic inversion of a familiar jazz classic (I'll give you a hint: it could have been called "A Day in Tunisia") and ended with a drum and tenor duo. He then wound up the set with a "suite" allegedly in honor of Parker, but which sounded nothing like early bop, attractive as it was.

At 6 p.m., host Sheila Anderson announced that the marvelous Cassandra Wilson would be filling in for Ms. Lincoln, which turned out to be only partly true. Rather, Ms. Wilson and two star horn players, Mr. Hargrove and the alto saxist Steve Coleman, launched an hour-long jam session with Ms. Lincoln's rhythm section (bassist Michael Bowie and two scions of famous jazz families: the drummer Marcus Gilmore, grandson of Parker's longtime drummer Roy Haynes, and Jonathan Batiste, of the New Orleans clan). It was particularly thrilling to hear Mr. Coleman, who normally plays only his own highly theoretical compositions in a music that's equally free jazz and funk, indulging us with fundamental bebop. His tone and attack were no less distinctive in this traditional context, and he was a great choice given his history with both Ms. Lincoln and Ms. Wilson.

Normally, Ms. Wilson offers a carefully prepared set of her own compositions and idiosyncratic arrangements, but on Saturday she was the very soul of spontaneity, joining the frontline wordlessly on Parker's "Ornithology" and another blues, "Now's the Time," scatting in solos and in unison with the horns. (In the front row, a few Harlemites of a certain age also spontaneously chose this moment to demonstrate a few Lindy Hop steps). Ms. Wilson also had the smarts to pay homage to Ms. Lincoln by performing the great lady's two most famous lyrics to jazz standards, Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk" and Freddie Hubbard's "Up Jumped Spring." It was a marvelous, completely unplanned and unpredictable set that captured the soul of jazz and of Charlie Parker.

wfriedwald@nysun.com