Animated Sheet Music of 3 Charlie Parker Jazz Classics: “Confirmation,” “Au Privave” & “Bloomdido” — openculture.com

We’ve shown you two exceedingly rare pieces of footage that capture jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker in action: one featuring him playing with Dizzy Gillespie, his fellow “founding father of bebop,” in 1952; and another, from two years before, where he plays with the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Rich, Lester Young, and Ella Fitzgerald. But since so little motion-picture material of Parker exists, his fans must have savored even seeing just the sheet music of his piece “Confirmation” animated when we posted it last year, alongside other such videos bringing to life the notation of works by greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane. “To see it animated,” wrote Josh Jones, “is to see Parker dance a very different step than Miles’ post-bop cool, one filled with complex melodic paragraphs instead of chordal phrases.” Indeed.

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