At The Birth Of Bop

Several years ago an amazing audio find came to light-a June 1945 Town Hall concert in New York City featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach-the rising stars of the then-revolutionary new music bebop-accompanied by Al Haig on piano and Curley Russell on bass. The performance, captured in sound that's stellar by the era's standards, has recently been issued by Uptown Records, and in it we hear the raw vitality of bebop's emerging canon. Chronologically, this is the first live and/or studio recording to feature a group made up solely of young musicians fluent in the musical language of bop. Parker and Gillespie blaze through seminal titles such as "Groovin' High," "Hot House," and "A Night in Tunisia." We'll also hear two Parker/Gillespie studio sides from earlier that year.