BIRD LIVES!

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

CHARLIE PARKER IS ONE BIRD you can't catch. Parker, who died in 1955, was a jazz innovator, a sax master, a wildly talented instrumentalist who could improvise his way through songs with an easy daring and offhand profundity. Saxophonists who pay too literal tribute to Bird's work miss its spark and point--its emotionality is linked to its originality.

How wise, then, that Parker's Mood, a tribute album to Parker by the Roy Hargrove-Christian McBride-Stephen Scott Trio, takes such an intriguingly indirect approach to its subject. The three young jazzmen record some of the tunes Bird made his own but with one key difference--there is not a saxophone to be heard on any of these songs (Hargrove is a trumpeter, McBride a bassist, Scott a pianist). The result of their duplication by subtraction is an album that instead of being haunted by Bird's ghost is infused with his spirit.

Several songs stand out. On the mournfully romantic ballad Laura, Hargrove takes the lead, lingering over each note of the song as if slowed by sorrow. On the nostalgic April in Paris, Scott goes solo and, through a succession of stately, undulating shifts in mood and rhythm, finds fresh, melancholy elegance in an old standard.

Without resorting to mimicry or sacrificing their personalities, the trio capture the core intelligence and essential sweetness of Parker's playing. The performances are disciplined; the song interpretations lithe, direct and largely unadorned. But the sense of love is palpable: love for Bird, his music and jazz in general. With Bird's originals, one is overwhelmed with his fierce creativity; with this trio's covers, one is caught up in their fierce devotion. It's not Bird, but it flies.

--By Christopher John Farley