- For the dance music performer and DJ, see Barry Harris (DJ).
Barry Doyle Harris (born Detroit, Michigan, December 15, 1929) is an American bebop jazz pianist and educator.
Biography
Harris left Detroit for New York City in 1960. Influenced also by Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk, Harris's playing is noted for its uncanny similarity to Bud Powell.[citation needed]
Harris has played with Cannonball Adderley, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, and Max Roach. As a lead artist, he has recorded over 14 albums.
During the 1970s, Harris lived with Monk and his family at the Weehawken, New Jersey home of the jazz patroness Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, and so was in an excellent position to comment on the last years of his fellow pianist.[1]
Harris appears in the 1989 documentary film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (produced by Clint Eastwood), performing duets with Tommy Flanagan.
Since 1996 Barry Harris has collaborated with Toronto-based pianist and teacher Howard Rees in creating a series of videos and workbooks documenting his unique harmonic system and teaching process.
In 2000, he was profiled in the film Barry Harris - Spirit of Bebop.
Barry Harris continues to perform and teach worldwide. When he is not travelling, he holds weekly music workshop sessions in New York City for vocalists, students of piano and other instruments.
Jazz Cultural Theater
In the Eighties, Harris maintained a unique institution, the Jazz Cultural Theater, in a former restaurant storefront on Eighth Avenue near 23rd Street in Manhattan. There he taught group music and piano lessons, as well as hosted his own performances and those of other like-minded artists. His album For the Moment was recorded there.
His approach to the teaching of jazz uses methods and techniques that pre-date the Berklee school and the Lydian Chromatic approach of George Russell. He relies upon the 6th chord and the 8-note, rather than the 7-note jazz scale, as a basis for melody and harmony. This is the material used by Bud Powell, Joseph Schillinger, George Gershwin, Glenn Miller, and even Frédéric Chopin. He emphasizes the concept of building a repertoire of one's own musical movements over common harmonic formulae.
The Jazz Cultural Theater was designed to last as long as the students and audiences kept the doors open. Unfortunately, Mr. Harris had an illness which required all his attention, and the theater closed at that time.
Theoretical Concepts
Barry Harris’ approach to jazz harmony relies heavily on the diminished chord and its relationship to the twelve keys. Utilizing the diminished chord, he has formulated scales which allow pianists greater freedom in accompaniment, to play, in his own words “movement, not chords.”
His fundamental scale is the major “sixth-diminished” scale, but equally important are the minor sixth to diminished and the dominant seven flat five to diminished scale. The major sixth-diminished scale is a major scale with a half step between the 5th and 6th scale degrees. A typical exercise using this scale involves playing a C Major 6th chord, up the scale to a D diminished 7th chord, back to C Major 6th in first inversion, to F diminished 7th ( i.e. D diminished 7th first inversion ), to C Major 6th in second inversion, and so on, up the scale until it reaches the octave. Moving chords up and down the scale in this way gives more possibilities for “movement”, as opposed to playing a static chord when playing jazz standard songs. Extending this concept, Barry relates all chord alterations (flat and sharp 9’s, sharp 11’s, flat 13’s, etc.) to a particular sixth-diminished scale, which gives options for “moving” the alterations through the scales.
Discography
As leader
- Wild As Springtime (with Lee Konitz, Candid Records)
- Breakin' It Up (Argo 1958)
- Barry Harris at the Jazz Workshop (Riverside 1960)
- Listen to Barris Harris . . . Solo Piano (Riverside 1960)
- Preminado (Riverside 1961)
- Newer Than New (Riverside 1961)
- Chasin' The Bird (Riverside 1962)
- Luminescence (Prestige 1967)
- Bull's Eye (Prestige 1968)
- Barry Harris Trio: Magnificent (Prestige 1969)
- Barry Harris plays Tadd Dameron (Xanadu 1975)
- Tokyo (1976)
- Barry Harris Plays Barry Harris (Xanadu 1978)
- Stay Right with It (Xanadu 1978)
- For the Moment (Uptown 1984)
- The Bird of Red and Gold (Xanadu 1989)
- Live at Maybeck Recital Hall - Volume Twelve (Concord 1991)
- First Time Ever (Ecidence 1997)
- Live in New York (Reservoir 2002)
As sideman
References
External links
