Upper West Side Love Story - A Song Cycle by Freddie Bryant

129 Convent Avenue at West 135th Street,New York NY 10031

06 October, 2022

Description

Upper West Side Love Story, A Song Cycle by Freddie Bryant, a work for chamber-jazz ensemble, is a musical journey through the iconic neighborhood made famous by Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. It is a personal history of memories from Bryant's youth and upbringing as well as a commentary on development and gentrification that is happening worldwide. He lived in the neighborhood for 54 years, from birth until 2019 when he moved to the Bronx. The song cycle spans children's playground rhymes, world-renowned musicians and artists in neighborhood, and the culture and joys of community, as well as the challenges of homelessness and crime from the 1970s to today. It also contextualizes the development and gentrification that has been underway since the early 1960s, when Lincoln Center was built, and takes up issues of race and class. The music is acoustic jazz with influences from straight-ahead sounds of early neighborhood residents (Billie Holliday, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Lee Konitz) as well as Latin jazz (Dizzy Gillespie, Mario Rivera), blues and funk. There is also a thread of classical music which comes from the influence of Bryant's parents–his mother was an opera singer, and his father was a concert pianist and accompanist–and other African American artists who lived on 87th Street. “A love story is about beginnings, about excitement and nurturing growth-- love through joy and adversity over many years. And sometimes it’s about growing distant, rejection and the search for the magic that seems to fade into distant memories. Either way, change is ceaseless and forever, and love hopes to survive. This piece is a love story dedicated to the neighborhood that raised me from birth to where I am now.” –Freddie Bryant MUSIC AND LYRICS BY FREDDIE BRYANT Photo credit: Warren Lee (Freddie’s friends on 99th St & West End Ave in NYC, circa 1970)