Charlie Parker's Yardbird

I recently attended a performance of the contemporary opera "Charlie Parker's Yardbird," which, among other things, left me thinking about the age-old question of whether an individual's artistic or intellectual accomplishments stand on their own, or whether they are forever linked to the life of the person who created them and should be evaluated in that context.

For example, as a New York Times article of November 2019 asked: "Is it time to stop looking at Gaugin altogether?"  That would be because the French artist apparently repeatedly had sex with young girls during the years he lived in Tahiti and fathered children with one or more of them.




Does such behavior taint his paintings to the extent no one should look at them, or do the paintings stand on their own, to be appreciated on their aesthetic merit independent of the personal shortcomings of the creator?

Parker was by all accounts one of the most important figures in jazz, not just because of his virtuosic playing of the saxophone, but more importantly because of his innovations as a composer. I'm not an expert on the intricacies of music, but the innovations centered on harmonic ideas involving chords that have been described as revolutionary.

"Charlie Parker's Yardbird," commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, appears to have more legs than most contemporary operas, perhaps because of current calls for more diversity in the arts and specifically for more opportunities for Black subject matter and roles for Black artists. "Porgy and Bess" can only be revived so many times.

To date, "Yardbird" has played in Philly; New York; Madison, Wisc.; Chicago; London; Atlanta; Arizona, and Seattle with generally, although not overwhelmingly, favorable reviews.

Curiously, and this comes back to my initial point, the music by Daniel Schnyder, does little if anything to evoke Parker's innovations in jazz. There are quotes and references -- one learns -- but an audience member would have to be very sophisticated -- and listening far more to the orchestra -- than listening to the singers or watching the production to apprehend them.  They are the equivalent of "inside baseball," one might argue.

As Schnyder said in an interview: "The music is written for a classical orchestra; there are no improvisations"  -- the latter being what much of jazz is arguably all about.

And it proceeds as most contemporary operas do: pretty much continuous background music through the entire piece often seemingly unrelated to the melodies, rarely memorable, that the performers are singing. "At times, the singers seem rhythmically disconnected from the score," a review in the Seattle Times noted.

Opera used to be first and foremost a platform for great vocalists signing often memorable arias (songs), but that now seems to be less and less the case. Why should singers bother with all that training, one wonders? And in this case, perhaps they didn't. Generally a "no-no" in the world of opera, the singers in Seattle's production were miked -- like a Broadway show.

So the focus is rather on Parker's short, 34-year personal life and his relations with several women, who, in the opera, tell his story of drug and alcohol addiction, apparent mental illness and a life in which he appears to have had little contact with his children. Some of this, of course, can be blamed on the nature of his profession, but Parker's behavior led to other musicians taking up drugs.

In the view of the creators of this piece, his saving grace was a dream of creating a composition of his own fusing Jazz and opera and "Yardbird" ends with him trying without success to get started on that.

The bottom line: for me Parker's musical innovations are more interesting than his problematic life and in that respect, the opera fell well short of the mark. I think his art is more significant on its own. This opera takes the opposite view, but as we know, celebrity sells and people without significant flaws just aren't that interesting.