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For Immediate Release: April 9, 2007

NEA Jazz Master Barry Harris Honored by Jazz Museum

• Barry Harris, Pianist April 12, 2007

The next guest of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s Harlem Speaks series, Barry Harris, is one of the quintessential keepers of the bebop piano flame. He was part of an exceptional crew of Detroit-bred jazz musicians, including Tommy Flanagan, and Donald Byrd, who arose through what was then an extraordinary public school system which nurtured budding artists. Harris’ earliest musical mentor was a church piano-playing mother who exposed him to piano lessons at age 4. He became seriously immersed in jazz in the mid-1940s and fell under the spell of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Bud Powell. As a professional he would become a key translator of Monk’s music.

Detroit was blessed with a high energy jazz scene during the ‘40s and Harris was house pianist at one of the hottest spots, the Blue Bird Lounge. At the Blue Bird and later at the Rouge, he backed such traveling soloists as Miles Davis, Wardell Gray, Max Roach, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, and Lester Young. Displaying an early interest in passing the torch through education, Barry began teaching his bebop theories as early as 1956, a tradition he has carried on throughout his life.

At the urging of Cannonball Adderley, Barry Harris left Detroit in 1960 and moved to New York. In addition to Adderley, Harris found work in the ’60s with fellow Detroiter Yusef Lateef, Charles McPherson, and Coleman Hawkins. He returned to Lateef’s band in 1970. In addition to sideman work Harris led various trios and duos at piano bars and restaurants around New York. He also began to get work as an arranger and composer, showing a particular adeptness for his treatment of string arrangements. A consummate freelancer, he found work in a variety of diverse settings, always bringing the bop flame; these affiliations included work with tap dancer Jimmy Slyde.

By the early 1980s Barry Harris’ acumen as a teacher and mentor to developing pianists had become legendary. He was able to expand these interests when he opened the Jazz Cultural Center in 1982 on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The Center served as workshop, educational facility, and performance space for Harris and his affiliated artists. Unfortunately the Center only lasted until 1987. But Barry Harris has soldiered on, continuing to teach and mentor young instrumentalists and singers. He also continues to present and produce spectacular annual multi-media concerts at places like Symphony Space, and the Manhattan Center in New York.

This next session of Harlem Speaks will be held at the Museum of the City of New York, located at 1220 Fifth Avenue (between 103^rd and 104^th Streets). _______________________________________________________________________­_

Lisle Atkinson, Harlem Speaks guest on Thursday, March 22, 2007, grew up in Brooklyn and began studying the violin at the age of four, giving his first concert at the age of six. He’s the oldest of three siblings of his parents Aenid and Albert, both violin players. They met while playing in the Dean Dixon Symphony Orchestra. His mother turned to piano and his father took up the bass, and was Atkinson’s first influence when he began playing the bass violin at the age of twelve.  

Atkinson explained to interviewers Christian McBride and Loren Schoenberg that his father listened to a lot of Duke Ellington, so he heard the legendary Jimmy Blanton early on. Later, Oscar Pettiford and Charles Mingus (with whom he became close) set the standard of bass excellence for him. Of Pettiford, Atkinson says he was impressed by his two-finger approach; of Mingus, “I loved his freedom. He could play what he wanted, when he wanted.” 

He attended Music and Art High School in New York City, where he played in the school’s orchestra, and befriended alto saxophonist Bobby Capers, multi-reed man George Braith, and bassist John B. Williams.  

Upon graduation, Atkinson entered Manhattan Music Conservatory, where he received a degree in Music. His first pro gig took place in Pittsburgh in 1959 while still in college.  

Percussionist Montego Joe introduced him to vocalist Nina Simone, for whom he performed for five years from 1961. “She was very cordial to me, and was the first to recognize my bowing skills. She was very talented, and set a mood that you’d never forget.”  

One of the most telling anecdotes about his tenure with Simone recounted her request for him to play the electric bass guitar for a date at The Plugged Nickel in Chicago in the mid-’60s. Since Dizzy Gillespie’s group incorporated that instrument Simone and her husband and manager, Andy Stroud, wanted Atkinson to play it “on a few tunes.” During rehearsal, a few became three, then four, until Atkinson had enough: he took the rented instrument and bashed it against the wall! He stormed out, intending to leave for home that very night.  

But Stroud convinced him to come back, after assuring him that they wouldn’t mention the electric bass again. 

In 1970 he joined the group of another unique stylist: Betty Carter. Her rhythm section was rounded out by drummer Al Harewood and pianist Norman Simmons, both in the audience this night. McBride marveled over the power of the ensemble’s work on “Betty Carter at the Village Vanguard,” and Atkinson said that Carter was in many ways “the opposite of Nina Simone, but they were both unique.” He emphasized Carter’s extensive arrangements and their rehearsals at her home in Brooklyn. 

Around this time he also began teaching bass and sight-reading for Jazzmobile, and performing with Bill Lee and the Bass Choir, which also featured Richard Davis, Ron Carter, Milt Hinton and Sam Jones. He said there were also memorable years with guitarist Kenny Burrell, and performances with Benny Carter, playing along with Loren Schoenberg. 

He also discussed the jazz art of the bassist and drummer locking their groove together to create powerful swing; the difficulty of maintaining one’s identity during the Civil Rights era (and Miles Davis’s example keeping him on track); playing in the Billy Taylor Trio in 1971; and the pleasures of performing with Joe Williams, Billy Eckstine, Nancy Wilson, and Dakota Staton. He’s often found these days in collaboration with Danny Mixon and Rudy Lawless, both previous guests of Harlem Speaks. Lawless was present, as was pianist Valerie Capers. 

Several members of his Neo-Bass Ensemble (including his wife Karen, Jay Starks, and Phil Watkins) performed with Atkinson on Bill Evans’s “Blue in Green” and Kenny Dorham’s jazz standard, “Prince Albert,” based on the chord changes to “All the Things You Are.” 

To hear this rare and exciting ensemble live, Atkinson invites you to hear them at Symphony Space on June 16, 2007 in a tribute to Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Betty Carter.

Save the Date! April 26, 20007:        Drummer Al Harewood

The Harlem Speaks series, supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced by the Jazz Museum in Harlem's Executive Director, Loren Schoenberg, Co-Director Christian McBride, and Greg Thomas, host and co-producer of the web’s only jazz news and entertainment television series, Jazz it Up!

Time: 6:30pm-8:30pm. This discussion series is free to the public.  To view the photo archives of Harlem Speaks go to: http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/hs_photos.html