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Autumn in New York: Five Versions by David Penberg December 7, 2006 Taken together as a medley, or as a variation on a theme, they evoke as close to perfection the smells, colors and sensations of fall in New York that music can convey. The other piece of music that comes closest to the melodic contour of autumn is Eric Satie's "Gymnopédies." The Charles Mingus version 1956 is Riverside Park: chestnuts, salted bagels and hot coffee in a paper cup. The trumpet and Danny Richmond?s drums are tensile and hip, giving it an Upper West Side- Hudson River sweep. The tenor sax is bluesy and bouncy like a good point guard. It is Riverside Park on a Sunday afternoon: kids-bikes-dogs- families-lovers-basketball players- moving about like a Romare Bearden collage. The saxophone and trumpet lines are full of windswept red, orange, and yellow leaves. Billy Holiday's version, Verve 1952, on the other hand, is Central Park. "Autumn in New York," she begins, "is often mingled with pain. It's autumn in New York," she says, "its good to live it again." Her voice is transfigured into an instrument that is divine and fallible. She sings out of the deepest impulses to make art from her magenta solitude. It's New York, October, 1952. She will be dead in four years. The leaves in Central Park have the silken quality of Chinese lanterns. No one understood personal loss quite as she did. This is an ode she left to us. Then there is Ella Fitzgerald's and Louis Armstrong's, Capitol 1966 recording. You can hear the presence of mortality. Louis' voice has aged like single malt in an oak barrel. His phrasing borders on impeccable and is sung like a man who has experienced enough autumns to know that life is a thing to live roundly and full. When he says the birds in the park, you know he has seen them. Ella is his soul mate. The voice has a trace of the girl who sang "A Tisket a Tasket." The entire song feels tinged, ever so softly (like the slow descent of one of those autumn leaves) with a sense of impending loss. There is a quietness and solitude in this recording. It touches on the finality of all things that pass. Even best friends. Bud Powell's Autumn in New York, Verve 1954 is cosmopolitan. This could be Paris or Barcelona. It contains wide boulevards of sound. There is a luxurious lilt to his piano. It shapes broad strokes of rhythm that convey the grandeur and melancholy of the fall. Its both Central Park and Riverside. This is a small masterpiece of bass, snare drum and Bud, meandering at the edges of lyricism and finishing with a big splash of music. Charlie Parker with strings, Decca 1952. Bird's version is lush, deep and playfully lyrical. Parker has been reading Baudelaire, according to Dizzy Gillespie. He read voraciously. The strings allow Bird to make his alto sax sound angelic. Once he announces the line it becomes a platform for the improvisation, his signature. Here it is jaunty and clean like a Gayle Sayers run in the open field. Billy Holiday sings in the same pitch. It arises from the same place where the lyric and the invention of music come from. About the author: I am and educator born and bred in the Bronx. I am presently a consultant with the Academy for Educational Excellence. | | | |
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