Barry Doyle Harris
05.10.2023
12.15.1929 – 12.08.2021
BARRY DOYLE HARRIS had, by any measure, a brilliant career as a jazz pianist, playing on over 70 records, and recording more than two dozen albums as a lead musician. However, it was his commitment to keeping the language of bebop and the spirit of its founding fathers alive that made him such an influential figure in the jazz community. Barry put the improvisations of jazz’s virtuosos under a microscope, discovering the musical grammar that makes bebop work - scales, chords, chromatic passing tones. He saw bebop as the true inheritor of the classic tradition, and jazz musicians like alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Bud Powell as part of a tradition begun by musicians like Chopin, “the true originators of improvisation” as he called them.
“The minute you make a mistake – that’s improvisation!”
—Barry Harris