Inspired by his love of the music of legendary jazz saxophonist
Charlie "Bird" Parker,
Rudresh Mahanthappa pays homage to the late bebop innovator on 2015's Bird Calls. It was purportedly while breaking down
Parker's performance on "Donna Lee" to help a student learn the infamously difficult song that saxophonist
Mahanthappa came up with the concept of a different way to interpret
Parker's music. Taken in small, easily digestible bites,
Mahanthappa began to hear
Parker's architectural bop motifs less as swinging, blues-based jazz and more as modern classical or even avant-garde music. Combining his own creative approach to jazz with Indian raga, funk, post-bop, and other eclectic stylistic elements,
Mahanthappa wrote pieces loosely based on
Parker's songs or parts of solos. For example, "Both Hands" reworks
Parker's "Dexterity" into a roiling, machine-gun stream of sound, and "Talin Is Thinking" turns
Parker's classic bluesy ballad "Parker's Mood" into a frenetic spiritual jazz workout. Furthermore, just as
Parker was often backed by a quintet featuring a trumpeter like the great
Dizzy Gillespie,
Mahanthappa takes the same approach, bringing with him 2014
Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition third-place winner
Adam O'Farrill along with pianist
Matt Mitchell, bassist
François Moutin, and drummer
Rudy Royston. Only 20 years old at the time of recording,
O'Farrill (the son of pianist
Arturo O'Farrill and the grandson of legendary Cuban percussionist, and
Parker associate,
Chico O'Farrill) is an immensely gifted trumpeter with a robust, rounded tone and lithe improvisational style. Joining with the other members of
Mahanthappa's quintet, he brings an intensity and buoyant creativity to Bird Calls that effectively updates the classic
Parker/
Gillespie partnership. For his end,
Mahanthappa, a brilliantly capable improviser blessed with a fluid, harmonically engaging approach to jazz, blazes his way through these songs, which are at once accessible yet boundlessly inventive. Ultimately, with Bird Calls,
Mahanthappa has crafted an exuberant, expressive album that's as fresh and surprising as the music
Parker originally recorded. ~ Matt Collar