Vincent Herring and Eric Alexander to Celebrate Charlie Parker at Smoke Jazz Club
Mike LeDonne, John Webber and Carl Allen round out the quintet at the Upper West Side venue.
Smoke Jazz Club will celebrate the birthday of jazz legend Charlie Parker with Bird Lives! A Charlie Parker Birthday Celebration, featuring the Vincent Herring & Eric Alexander Quintet, August 26–30.
Alto saxophonist Vincent Herring and tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander will lead a quintet featuring pianist Mike LeDonne, bassist John Webber and drummer Carl Allen. Parker, one of the defining figures of bebop, was born August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas.
Herring and Alexander share a longstanding musical partnership that has frequently been billed as a "saxophone battle," drawing on a jazz tradition of friendly musical competition that Parker himself knew well.
The pair's collaborations include the 2005 recording The Battle: Live at Smoke and their 2026 release Split Decision. Their performances bring together two formidable saxophonists whose years of collaboration have developed a strong musical rapport while retaining the energy and improvisational interplay of the jazz "battle" tradition.
"For those who long for the time when hard bop reigned supreme... here's a sure cure for any lament that those days are lost and gone forever," All About Jazz said of their work, while Paris Move described the quintet as "a dream team of seasoned musicians whose names have long been synonymous with jazz excellence."
Herring has been praised by WNPR Radio for fusing "instrumental mastery with equal and unified parts of jazz's holy trinity of heart, mind, and soul." DownBeat, meanwhile, has praised Alexander's "chops, power, and passion."
Bird Lives! A Charlie Parker Birthday Celebration will run Wednesday through Sunday, August 26–30, at Smoke Jazz Club, located at 2751 Broadway in New York City.
Sets will take place at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. each evening, with additional 10 p.m. performances Friday and Saturday. Doors open at 4 p.m.
General admission tickets begin at $25. A $15 livestream option will also be available for Friday's performance.
