Today, on modern jazz pioneer Charlie Parker’s heavenly birthday, Verve Records announces Bird in Kansas City, an album featuring a new set of rare recordings dating from between 1941-1951, to be released globally this October 2024 on vinyl, CD, and digitally and available to pre-order now.

Today, as the sun rises and sets, we celebrate the birth of a soul who once soared through the realms of music like a comet across the night sky. Charlie "Bird" Parker, the architect of bebop, the virtuoso who reshaped the very essence of jazz, was born on this day, and in his honor, we gather our thoughts, our memories, and our gratitude.

Bird was not just a musician; he was a force of nature, a storm that tore through the conventions of melody and rhythm, leaving behind a landscape forever changed. His saxophone did not merely play notes; it sang the human experience—raw, unfiltered, and relentless. His music was the voice of the unspoken, the rhythm of the untamed, the melody of the soul's deepest longings.

Craft Recordings is pleased to announce Ornithology: The Best of Bird, a brand-new Charlie “Bird” Parker collection that introduces the legendary saxophonist through 11 classic tracks.

On May 15, 1953, five of jazz’s most influential musicians – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Bud Powell – gathered at Toronto’s Massey Hall for what would result in their first and only known recording as a quintet. While only a small audience was able to experience it in person, this historic evening was captured on tape. The resulting album, The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall, would become one of the genre’s most essential and celebrated releases.

It's a shimmering morning in Jazzlandia, a world where notes float like balloons and musical bars build bridges between dimensions. The air is thick with anticipation. Why? Because it's Charlie "Bird" Parker's 103rd birthday and the town is gearing up for the sassiest saxophone soiree of the century.

Join the Ken Peplowski Quartet for a special concert honoring the iconic album, “Charlie Parker with Strings” at Birdland!

Cleveland native and tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Peplowski, “…arguably the greatest living jazz clarinetist,” (BBC) presents “Bird With Strings” a birthday celebration of Bird’s best loved album – Charlie Parker with Strings, originally released in1950.

On Friday, June 17, 2022, Flushing Town Hall’s Queens Jazz Orchestra (QJO) returns live to the stage with "Bird Flight," a special tribute program honoring Phil Schaap and the genius of Charlie Parker. Antonio Hart, GRAMMY-nominated jazz artist and an original member of the QJO, will be making his debut as the orchestra’s new conductor, following the 2020 passing of its longtime leader, NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath.

Throughout his brief but influential life, Charlie “Bird” Parker made an enormous impact on popular music as one of the architects of modern jazz. The jazz titan, inarguably one of the greatest saxophonists of all time, grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and spent much of his adult life in New York, but Los Angeles nonetheless looms large in his musical life as he spent more time in L.A. than anywhere outside of K.C. and N.Y.

On the day of Charlie “Bird” Parker’s 100th birthday, it is impossible to overstate the impact and influence that the legendary jazz icon has had on music and culture. Born on August 29th, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas, Parker is simply one of the most important Black American figures in history, a towering musical genius who blazed his own path as a pioneering musician and composer, altering the course of music forever.

Commencing at midnight August 27th and concluding at midnight September 4th, WKCR-FM (89.9 FM, wkcr.org) will dedicate all programming to celebrations of the legacies and influences of two of jazz’s central figures: Charlie Parker (b. 8/29/20, d. 3/12/55) and Lester Young (b. 8/27/09, d. 3/15/59). For more than four decades, the station has noted their birthday anniversaries with a three-day marathon broadcast.