Me, Bird and New York City

Last week I went to New York to attend a wedding. In two full days we did midtown and uptown Manhattan, the Village and Brooklyn – where the reception was.

Along the way I managed to get to Birdland.

First, a couple observations. Every time I go to New York, it never ceases to amaze me how walkable the city is despite its mammoth size. “It’s the grid system” people always tell me.

Another thing that caught my eye was how relatively clean the city is now. New York is no longer center of cultural debauchery – Ancient Rome circa the 1st century in the middle of the New World - it once was in the 1970s. The city has become professionalized almost corporate like now. Only the Village maintains a certain independent/alternative vibe.

Between 1988 and 1998 I went to New York on numerous occasions. Each time it came with a set of “donts” from stunned family members. “You want to go to Time Square for New Year’s?” Once they got past the initial phase of shock and quickly realized that visiting New York is not as crazy as they thought, they moved into New York advice mode.

I remember most of them. “Don’t stare at anyone in the eye,” “keep looking around,” “stay away from 8th avenue” and “stay where the cops are – on 5th, Broadway and other tourist areas.”

This was post-Bernard Goetz and pre-Rudolph Giuliani so New York was just about to experience its remarkable metamorphous. The streets were dirty, the people rude and suspect and the crime rate still high.

Yet, we loved it. New York impacts almost anyone who visits for obvious reasons. So rich in cultural texture, the city literally is unique among world cities.

Then, 9/11 came. Even for a Canadian that day will remain with me. What stunning images. I still remember them quite vividly. A great metropolis wounded. I had to go back.

It took me six years but I finally went back.

We explored as much as we could in 48 hours and vowed to come back. My cousin has dangled Rangers and Knicks tickets in my face to make good on this vow.

My, quite an introduction just to get to my impressions of a New York landmark: Birdland. As a jazz enthusiast, it’s years I wanted to go to Birdland and I finally did.

Despite several reincarnations (the original opened in Midtown Manhattan in 1949, closed in 1965, remerged in 1986 in the Upper West Side and moved back to Midtown ten years after that), “The Jazz corner of the world” pretty much remains that from what I am told. It’s a sad fact of our musical landscape that the great jazz clubs are all but closed now. Jazz, while vibrant as a musical form, is now permanently a niche market.

Once upon a time it wasn’t the case. Before rock’n roll jazz was what people listened to. They got dressed up and went to see the jazz greats perform legendary music late into the wee hours of the sultry, steamy New York night. It was all so cool. This trend led to Birdland’s closing in 1965.

Bebop, alto-saxophonist Charlie Parker – aka Yardbird or just Bird – was the genius headlining Birdland on Broadway west of 52nd street; a section of NYC that was at the center of jazz in the 1930s and 1940s.

Birdland witnessed many landmark performances and legendary musicians as well as celebrities. Birdland is where Dizzzy Gillespie and Bird conceived the bepop movement if I’m not mistaken.

The latest reincarnation of Birdland is the one I experienced. Given the interesting and spacious layout, there really isn’t a cheap place in the house and when one enters the club you can bet that everyone in there is there for the jazz.

Jazz is not at the forefront of our conscience anymore but that doesn’t mean great jazz isn’t being played and performed. Birdland is proof that jazz still resonates with people. It may not be in the same spontaneous and wild setting it once was but still quite worth a visit.

Today, a new generation of modern jazz musicians walk through its hollowed grounds.

As for me, I saw French composer, arranger and pianist Michel LeGrand. It’s rare a musician is as accomplished as he is in terms of awards. LeGrand won three Oscars and five Grammy’s as well as an Emmy nomination.

In the early 1950s, Legrand was one of the first Europeans to work with legendary jazz innovators Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Bill Evans. He has also worked with such musicians as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Jack Jones, Regine Velasquez, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Lena Horne, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, James Ingram, Johnny Mathis and Barbra Streisand.

New York has evolved and so has Birdland. I’ve evolved. I wish I was around in its “hey-day” but destiny had other plans for me. I have a feeling I would have fit right in.