Check It Out: A New Musical With a Bebop Theme

If you’re in the New York metro area this week I can recommend a very interesting jazz-themed play for you to see called Central Avenue Breakdown. The play is a musical and it is affiliated with the New York  Musical Theatre Festival 2011 and is only playing through Sunday at the Signature Theater on West 42nd Street. The story is centered on two jazz-playing brothers in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, around the time of the birth of bebop. The older brother is a swing-oriented player, on tenor, and the younger brother plays alto and is influenced by the new music. The story touches on many themes and  the jazz backdrop and the very strong playing by the band will make it a natural for the Jazz Collector audience. The music is all original by Kevin Ray, who is clearly quite talented, and, to my extreme pleasure, the depiction of the bebop sound was spot-on. They could have used real bop numbers such as Groovin’ High or Hot House but instead chose to use original music that accurately captured the sound. A special tip of the hat to the alto player, Mike Migliore, who was quite Bird-like while also being quite original within the bop medium. Most of the music is not bop, but is a cross section of sounds, from R+B to bop to scat to straight-ahead blues, with a couple of nice ballads thrown in as well.  But when it bops, it really bops.

I went to the opening night performance last night and that was an extra treat because they had a discussion after the play and brought in the saxophonist Sonny Simmons to chat about the era and the music. Sonny was quite charming and articulate and recalled the first time he ever saw Bird — in Oakland, when Sonny was a teenager — and how that changed his life forever. He also told some stories about how he recorded for Lester Koenig on the Contemporary label in the early 1960s, and about playing and rehearsing with Eric Dolphy.

One of the reasons I was aware of the play was because it was directed and choreographed by a young man by the name of Christopher Windom, who is a friend of mine and a very good friend of my son’s. My son Michael and Christopher got their MFA’s in theater directing at Brown/Trinity Rep in Providence and I’ve seen a lot of his work. This is really good theater, very well directed with some dazzling choreography, and worth your time if you are in the New York area. There are very few plays with jazz as a central theme, and one of the reasons Central Avenue Breakdown works well is because the jazz is authentic but it is not the only type of music, and the mix of different and eclectic styles helps to tell the story. The story-telling is helped by a very strong cast as well as a very talented band and, of course, a fantastic director. I’ll be interested to see if something happens with this musical and if it gets produced in other venues. It’s definitely worth seeing.