Word: birdland
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...rock-'n'-roll. "One of the worst things about this stuff they play nowadays," said Benny, "is what it does to the musicians. I had an awful time trying to get some guys together who could really deliver music. A little while ago I went over to Birdland to see what was going on. I was standing there listening in bewilderment when I noticed this kid next to me, concentrating like hell. 'You really get something out of this?' I asked him. 'Well,' he said, 'they're looking for something...
...encores. Later that night, he could be seen walking down neon-gaudy Broadway. Just five blocks south of the august concert hall, he ducked into a cellar. Within a few minutes Concert Pianist Friedrich Gulda was on the bandstand, amid the smoke and clatter of Broadway's famed Birdland nightclub, playing jazz-cool, glittering and poignant as icicles. Sitting in with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Pianist Gulda rippled out chorus after chorus of Lullaby of Birdland while the hipsters shouted approval. "How much nicer this is than Carnegie Hall," sighed Pianist Gulda when closing time came...
Like Gulls & Honey. At Birdland, Carnegie Hall or anywhere else, Vienna's Friedrich Gulda, 24, is a pianist to watch...
Through the dim and smoky atmosphere of the Manhattan jazz den called Birdland came some old and familiar piano tones. The holiday crowd quieted and the music took over, its tones pure and glassy, its melody suggested almost as much as stated, its long moments of silence as pregnant as the notes themselves. William "Count" Basie, the man who was as instrumental as Benny Goodman in popularizing swing, was back on the bandstand again, jumping high and handsome as ever...
First, balloon-shaped Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson faced each other across grand pianos. Then came Erroll Garner, and finally big Art Tatum, his almost sightless eyes turned to the wall. If Birdland, Manhattan's midtown mecca of jive, wanted to put on a representative "parade" of jazz pianists last week, it could hardly have found four ivory ticklers with more varying styles...