Christopher Byars | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | November 2, 1970 New York City |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation | Musician |
| Instrument | Saxophone |
| Labels | SteepleChase |
| Website | chrisbyars |
Christopher Byars (born November 2, 1970) is an American jazz saxophonist. Formerly a child opera singer, Byars has toured for the U.S. State Department as a jazz ambassador with frequent collaborator Ari Roland.
Byars was born in New York City on November 2, 1970, to oboist James Byars and clarinetist Janita Byars. [1] At six, he debuted as an opera performer joining the New York City Opera and Metropolitan Opera children's choirs, the New York City Ballet, and attending the School of American Ballet from ages 8 to 11 years old. [2] [3] He performed hundreds of shows as a child, [2] including the title role in a made-for-TV adaptation of The Spellbound Child with George Balanchine. [4] Puberty deepened his voice, and his singing career came to an end when his voice croaked during a performance of Tosca . [5]
When Byars returned from his final tour as a singer in 1983, he was given a saxophone by his father and began focusing exclusively on jazz. [5] [4] As a teenager, he studied the music of Charlie Parker after his father gave him the albums Bird and Diz and Charlie Parker with Strings . [2] [1] Byars was influenced as a teenager by bassist Aaron Bell, pianist Barry Harris, who mentored him, and author Frank McCourt, his creative writing teacher at Stuyvesant High School. [2] [6] He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in music from the Manhattan School of Music in 1990 and 1992 respectively. [4]
Byars first set as a leader was a 1989 quartet date at the Angry Squire. [7] In 1990, Byars co-founded Across 7 Street with Ari Roland as a tribute band to the erstwhile saxophonist Clarence Sharpe. [8] [6] The band performed Sunday nights at Smalls Jazz Club, playing original compositions inspired by the bebop era. [1] In 1998, Byars joined the Frank Hewitt quintet, which featured former Across 7 Street members Roland and Jimmy Lovelace, performing Saturday nights with him for four years. [2]
Byars has visited more than 50 countries as a jazz ambassador. [9] He began touring as part of the Ari Roland quartet with the State Department in December 2006 after making it to the finals of a competition held at Jazz at Lincoln Center. [10] The tours are intended to improve America's image abroad, and feature Byars collaborating with local musicians and incorporating elements of their native traditions into jazz. [11]
Inspired by his 2007 tour of Central Asia, Byars wrote the suite Jazz Pictures at an Exhibition of Himalayan Art, based on the Modest Mussorgsky piece Pictures at an Exhibition . [11] The work has some foreign influences but is primarily based in the language of American jazz. It debuted at an October 2007 show at the Rubin Museum of Art, [12] and was again played at the Museum in April 2008. The live performances featured Byars playing in front of a slideshow. [13] An album of the same name was later released, with each composition corresponding to a painting on display at the Museum. [14]
In 2008, Byars' quartet toured as part of The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad, playing in Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Montenegro, and Slovenia. [3] In Muslim-majority areas, Byars won audiences over by telling them the story of Muslim American musician Basheer Qusim, a.k.a. Gigi Gryce. [15]
After performing in a commemoration of the reopening of Ledra Street crossing, Byars co-directed the "Jazz Futures" program organized by the American embassy in Cyprus with Roland from 2008 to 2013. [16] The series brought together Byars' groups and Turkish and Greek Cypriot musicians and audiences. [17] [18]
Byars has recorded a number of tribute albums and live sets, playing the compositions of lesser known post-bop musicians. [3] As part of the programs, Byars infuses his own musical identity with those of his predecessors. [19]
From March 22 to 25, 2006, Byars led a four-night set at Smalls playing the compositions of Lucky Thompson, performing, at various points, with former Thompson sidemen John Hicks and Jerry Dodgion. [2] During the preparation for the set, Byars and historian Noal Cohen discovered a private recording of an August 28, 1961, radio broadcast of Thompson's octet. Byars transcribed every arrangement on the recording and taught them to the members of his own octet. [20] These compositions, as well as re-arrangements from Thompson's quartet records, were later played on the album Lucky Strikes Again . [21]
In 2007, Byars' quartet played at Teddy Charles' house, at the behest of Cohen, helping to coax the vibraphonist-turned-captain back into playing music. In June of the next year, Byars premiered the composition Bop-ography, inspired by Charles' life, in Greenwich Village. [22] He also played with the Teddy Charles Tentet in its first appearance since Charles' retirement. [23] Byars would later record with Charles on Dances with Bulls , Charles' first studio recording in forty years, and his own album Bop-ography . [24] [25]
Byars has also worked on projects commemorating Freddie Redd, Gigi Gryce, Duke Jordan, Frank Strozier, and Jimmy Cleveland. [4]
Byars' music is based in 1950s bebop, though with additional contemporary stylings. [5] He developed as one of many younger players at Smalls Jazz Club during the 1990s, working with veteran players like Jimmy Lovelace and Frank Hewitt. [26] [2] Byars has used the octet format in his band to exploit the texture gains from a big band while retaining the fluidity of a small group. [27] [21]
Byars is a member of American Federation of Musicians Local 802. [11] He lives with his second wife, Ayna, and has two children from a previous marriage. [28] During the COVID-19 pandemic, he took up various government jobs for financial reasons. [4] He has one brother, Michael Byars. [29]
| Year recorded | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 2001–2002 | Night Owls | Smalls Records |
| 2001–2002 | The Darkling Thrush (with Sasha Dobson) | Smalls Records |
| 2002 | Made in New York (with Across 7 Street) | Smalls Records |
| 2006 | Photos in Black, White and Gray | Smalls Records |
| 2007 | Jazz Pictures At An Exhibition Of Himalayan Art | SteepleChase |
| 2008 | Blue Lights: The Music of Gigi Gryce | SteepleChase |
| 2009 | Bop-ography | SteepleChase |
| 2010 | Lucky Strikes Again | SteepleChase |
| 2011 | Music Forever | SteepleChase |
| 2013 | Jasmine Flower | SteepleChase |
| 2014 | The Music of Duke Jordan | SteepleChase |
| 2014 | Two Fives | SteepleChase |
| 2015 | The Music of Frank Strozier | SteepleChase |
| 2016 | New York City Jazz | SteepleChase |
| 2018 | A Hundred Years from Today | SteepleChase |
| 2019 | On the Shoulders of Giants | SteepleChase |
| 2021 | Rhythm And Blues Of The 20s | SteepleChase |
| 2023 | Look Ahead | SteepleChase |
| 2024 | Boptics | SteepleChase |
| Year recorded | Leader | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Frank Hewitt | Four Hundred Saturdays | Smalls Records |
| 2005 | Ari Roland | Sketches from a Bassist's Album | Smalls Records |
| 2007 | Ari Roland | And So I Lived In Old New York | Smalls Records |
| 2008 | Teddy Charles | Dances with Bulls | Smalls Records |
| 2009 | Ari Roland | New Music | Smalls Records |
| 2017 | Phil Stewart | Introducing Phil Stewart: Melodious Drum | Cellar Live |
Source [30]
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues, ragtime, European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, scat singing, bent horn, pouched cheeks, and light-hearted personality have made him an enduring icon.
Keith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey and later moved on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a group leader and solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, including Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.
Benny Golson was an American bebop and hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career. Golson was known for co-founding and co-leading The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer in 1959. From the late 1960s through the 1970s Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television and thus was less active as a performer, but he and Farmer re-formed the Jazztet in 1982.
Oscar Pettiford was an American jazz double bassist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.
John Aaron Lewis was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger, best known as the founder and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Eli "Lucky" Thompson was an American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist whose playing combined elements of swing and bebop. Although John Coltrane usually receives the most credit for bringing the soprano saxophone out of obsolescence in the early 1960s, Thompson embraced the instrument earlier than Coltrane.
Gigi Gryce, later in life changing his name to Basheer Qusim, was an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator.
Straight-ahead jazz is a genre of jazz that developed in the 1960s, with roots in the prior two decades. It omits the rock music and free jazz influences that began to appear in jazz during this period, instead preferring acoustic instruments, conventional piano comping, walking bass patterns, and swing- and bop-based drum rhythms.
"Yardbird Suite" is a bebop standard composed by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker in 1946. The title combines Parker's nickname "Yardbird" and a colloquial use of the classical music term "suite". The composition uses an 32-bar AABA form. The "graceful, hip melody, became something of an anthem for beboppers."
Teddy Charles, born Theodore Charles Cohen was an American jazz musician and composer, whose instruments were the vibraphone, piano, and drums.
Myron Walden is a jazz saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist.
Richie Vitale is an American jazz trumpeter, arranger, and composer.
Vahagn Hayrapetyan is a jazz pianist, singer and composer.
Taru Alexander is an American jazz drummer, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is a son of Roland Alexander, an American post-bop jazz tenor saxophone player from Boston, Massachusetts.
Sacha Perry is an American jazz pianist, composer and pedagogue.
James Ross Lovelace was an American jazz drummer.
Photos in Black, White and Gray is an album by American jazz saxophonist Chris Byars.
Across 7 Street was an American jazz group co-led by Ari Roland and Chris Byars. The group played Sunday nights at Smalls Jazz Club for nine years until the original club's closure in 2003, and also played at the University of the Streets. The band was formed after the death of saxophonist C. Sharpe. Its name was in reference to the University of the Streets, where Sharpe taught, being on the other side of East 7th Street from the Peter Jarema Funeral Home, where he was buried. It played music based in traditional bebop. The band was featured in the Impulse! Records compilation Jazz Underground: Live at Smalls, and recorded the album Made In New York. On September 28, 2004, tracks recorded by the band in 2001 were released under the title The Eternal Triangle for digital download, in a bid to raise money for drummer Jimmy Lovelace's cancer treatment.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)Much as bebop developed underground in places like Minton's where musicians gathered to play for each other, the same dynamic developed at Smalls in the '90s, connecting a new generation to unreconstructed veterans such as Frank Hewitt and through them to the foundations of modern jazz.
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