Jazz Articles about Barry Harris

Barry Harris: Live In New York

by Mark Corroto
September 25, 2003

It is funny (strange) how the mainstream press “rediscovers" jazz musicians in the golden years of their careers. Not that Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, or Dexter Gordon had ever really been missing. As with these hall of famers, prepare for the mainstream press to rediscover pianist Barry Harris.

Marketing departments might favor twenty-somethings over bespeckled white-haired gentlemen, but jazz piano fans are loyal to Mr. Harris' warmhearted bebop lines. Cut from the same Detroit mold as Hank Jones and Tommy ...

Barry Harris: Live in New York

by Dan McClenaghan
September 25, 2003

Do they give Grammy Awards for the best performance by an underrated jazz performer? If they do, last year's winner would have to have been saxman Von Freeman's The Improvisor. This year the top nominee would have to be pianist Barry Harris, for Live in New York. Harris has been playing jazz in the mode of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and other bop icons for round about fifty years now, recording numerous albums as a leader on mostly ...

Barry Harris Quintet: Newer Than New

by David Rickert
June 1, 2001

Barry Harris was always considered one of the elder statesmen of the Detroit scene, even though he was only in his thirties when he made his mark. Armed with a piano style based on the advances of Bud Powell, Harris dedicated his life to filling the vacuum left by the waning light of the bebop giants of NYC. To this end, he tutored several players of the Detroit scene, happy to share the spotlight with anyone who showed promise. Newer ...

Barry Harris: Magnificent!

by C. Andrew Hovan
January 1, 2000

By the time pianist Barry Harris recorded his first session as a leader in 1958, Breakin' It Up for the Argo label, Charlie Parker had already been dead for three years and the be-bop movement that he had helped usher in was already giving way to the more visceral advance of hard bop and the beginning strains of Ornette Coleman's “new thing" approach. For Harris, who was a died-in-the-wool be-bopper, this meant coming on the scene a bit too late ...

Barry Harris: Magnificent!

by Derek Taylor
January 1, 2000

Despite the suspicious absence of modesty in the title of this disc this is one trio that definitely lives up to their chosen moniker. One tour through the eight tunes that these three players hew to their own devices is all that’s necessary to discover that their contention is no idle boast. Harris is the comparative veteran of the group. A consummate keyboardist, Harris rose to maturity during the bumpy birth of bebop out of swing. As a result his ...