Some critics use chronological age as a crucial standard for measuring talent, just as powerful publicity machines fixate on youth as a prime marketing point for peddling jazz products.
But in the real world of the musicians themselves, there isn't any generation gap, no cultural chasm between Old Masters residing atop Mount Olympus and rising New Masters.
For proof, look only to the lineup this weekend at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, which features pianist Marian McPartland, the legendary 90-year-old pianist/composer, and pianist/composer Aaron Parks, a rising star of 24 already hailed as a visionary force.
Making her annual Labor Day weekend pilgrimage from her Long Island home to Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., McPartland does a live taping of her Peabody Award-winning National Public Radio series “Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" Saturday at 2 p.m. with her guests Nnenna Freelon, Mulgrew Miller and Spencer Day.
In recent years, The Grande Dame of Jazz-- an aristocratic-sounding title that no doubt makes this modest, democratically minded native of Great Britain cringe -- has used Tanglewood as the forum for her relaxed music- and anecdote-packed interviews with Renee Rosnes, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall, and Norah Jones.
Flourishing for nearly 30 years, “Piano Jazz"-- the longest-running cultural show on NPR -- has featured more than 500 guests. A dizzying array of luminaries, the guest list ranges from Dizzy Gillespie and Cecil Taylor to Alicia Keys and Willie Nelson, including West Hartford piano phenomenon Brad Mehldau.
Electrifying eclectic
Celebrating his new breakthrough release on Blue Note Records, “Invisible Cinema," Parks, an electrifying eclectic, leads his quartet Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Tanglewood's Jazz Cafe. An informal, cabaret-style venue, the Jazz Cafe specializes in emerging talent, often including the best and the brightest of the new wave showing promise of having long-lasting impact on the music.
A Seattle native and piano prodigy who was also a math and computer-science wizard, Parks honed his jazz skills during a five-year stint with the great trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard. After his productive jazz undergrad years with Blanchard, himself a jazz savant, Parks hooked up on tour in a quintet led by a kindred, adventurous, young spirit and fellow rising star, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.
But in the real world of the musicians themselves, there isn't any generation gap, no cultural chasm between Old Masters residing atop Mount Olympus and rising New Masters.
For proof, look only to the lineup this weekend at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, which features pianist Marian McPartland, the legendary 90-year-old pianist/composer, and pianist/composer Aaron Parks, a rising star of 24 already hailed as a visionary force.
Making her annual Labor Day weekend pilgrimage from her Long Island home to Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., McPartland does a live taping of her Peabody Award-winning National Public Radio series “Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" Saturday at 2 p.m. with her guests Nnenna Freelon, Mulgrew Miller and Spencer Day.
In recent years, The Grande Dame of Jazz-- an aristocratic-sounding title that no doubt makes this modest, democratically minded native of Great Britain cringe -- has used Tanglewood as the forum for her relaxed music- and anecdote-packed interviews with Renee Rosnes, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall, and Norah Jones.
Flourishing for nearly 30 years, “Piano Jazz"-- the longest-running cultural show on NPR -- has featured more than 500 guests. A dizzying array of luminaries, the guest list ranges from Dizzy Gillespie and Cecil Taylor to Alicia Keys and Willie Nelson, including West Hartford piano phenomenon Brad Mehldau.
Electrifying eclectic
Celebrating his new breakthrough release on Blue Note Records, “Invisible Cinema," Parks, an electrifying eclectic, leads his quartet Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Tanglewood's Jazz Cafe. An informal, cabaret-style venue, the Jazz Cafe specializes in emerging talent, often including the best and the brightest of the new wave showing promise of having long-lasting impact on the music.
A Seattle native and piano prodigy who was also a math and computer-science wizard, Parks honed his jazz skills during a five-year stint with the great trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard. After his productive jazz undergrad years with Blanchard, himself a jazz savant, Parks hooked up on tour in a quintet led by a kindred, adventurous, young spirit and fellow rising star, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
