JaLCO’s Sherman Irby reflects on how bebop shaped a wealth of genres

For two nights in January, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will present a new take on musical revolutions that have reverberated for more than 70 years.

The first of two Jazz at Lincoln Center performances at Symphony Center next month will focus on bebop, which emerged in the 1940s when saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and their colleagues delivered accelerated tempos and introduced radical new harmonies. Orchestra saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist and music director Sherman Irby said their impact shaped a wealth of genres.

“Because bebop was so radical, it influenced everything from the end of the 1940s to now,” Irby said. “We use that as a reference to play all styles of music. John Coltrane was influenced by it, [drummer] Elvin Jones was influenced by the way Max Roach played, rock musicians were influenced by the way Elvin played. That was the biggest thing, it was a shock to the system that nobody saw coming.”

Just after Parker and Gillespie’s innovations started to grow in the mid-1950s, a different movement built on what they created. Known as hard bop, this vigorous style conveyed harmonic richness and driving rhythms that drew more directly from blues and gospel. Irby credits pianist Horace Silver, drummer Art Blakey, trumpeter Kenny Dorham and saxophonist Hank Mobley as the key hard-bop creators. Jazz at Lincoln Center will highlight their works, along with original compositions for the second night at Symphony Center.

“The sound was a little bit of bebop, a little bit of soul, the introduction of the shuffle, exploring more of the African 6/8 rhythm; it created something that was very sophisticated and at the same time a groove that people could grip and maybe dance to,” Irby said. “My dad couldn’t really understand bebop: too many changes, it was going a little too fast for him. But when he heard that Art Blakey shuffle, he understood what that was. Or the soulfulness of Hank Mobley. Hard bop was sophisticated, but in the presentation, soulful.”

“Because bebop was so radical, it influenced everything from the end of the 1940s to now.” — Sherman Irby of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Miles Davis, among many others, was pivotal in both of those developments, including cool jazz, particularly because of his 1957 nonet album, “Birth of the Cool.” Seemingly contrasting with bebop and hard bop, slower tones with minimal vibrato and classical motifs were emphasized over force. But Irby added that all of these strains also shared qualities.

“Cool was the opposite of bebop, but it’s also not exactly opposite because all of the same elements are there,” Irby said. “All those musicians were still influenced by them, you still had the virtuosic, but it was not as aggressive. This was like bebop, but from the point of view of [saxophonist] Lester Young, more relaxed, more space, not the rapid succession of chord changes, more long notes, more melody, but it’s all jazz. And this was all around the same time period, 1940s and 1950s. Those time periods were very short — 10 years is not a long time.”

This year, the orchestra celebrated another musician whose influence also began in the bebop era, as drummer Obed Calvaire led the album “The Music of Max Roach” (released on the orchestra’s own Blue Engine label). Like Davis, Roach had a multifaceted career in the decades that followed. Irby said this project provided an opportunity for the ensemble to immerse themselves in Roach’s legacy of combining music with social activism.

“We weren’t there in the 1960s and ’70s when he was putting his imprint into the music,” Irby said. “Or when he, [singer and Roach’s wife] Abbey Lincoln, and other musicians were trying to get people aware of what was going on in the world through their music: the cries of the disenchanted. So we got a chance to dive into that, and that’s special.”

About five years ago, Irby led a different kind of project with the orchestra, his “Inferno” (Blue Engine), an album that interpreted Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. But even though that poetic epic was rooted in 14th-century Florence, this musical version conveys the sound that is always at the heart of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission.

“I wanted to make sure there’s a lot of blues in it because that’s the most soulful form of music we have in America,” Irby said. “No matter if it’s swinging, country, R&B, the blues is prevalent all over the U.S., and the blues is what we always push in jazz, I wanted to make sure that’s in the piece. It gives a platform to be dark, then happy, all those different things. Duke Ellington taught us how to do that.”