Pittsburgh Opera To Perform Charlie Parker's YARDBIRD For Live, Socially-Distant Audiences, April 10-22

Pittsburgh Opera will present the first-ever Pittsburgh performances of Charlie Parker's Yardbird, based on the life of legendary jazz musician, at its headquarters in the Strip District from April 10th through 22nd.

Pittsburgh Opera will have live, socially-distant audiences at all six performances. Pittsburgh Opera is maintaining its successful COVID-19 safety protocols, including reduced seating capacity, mandatory mask wearing, health screenings and temperature checks for all people entering the building, and more. Full details are available on Pittsburgh Opera's COVID-19 Safety Protocols webpage.

To enhance patrons' experience as they enter the building, local funk and jazz collective quartet Funky Fly Project will be playing live jazz while photographs from the The Teenie Harris Archive at Carnegie Museum of Art featuring Charlie Parker performing in Pittsburgh are projected onto a large screen.

All six performances are currently sold out, but there is room on the waiting list. The Friday, April 16th performance at 7:30PM will be livestreamed free of charge on both Pittsburgh Opera's YouTube channel and Facebook page. The livestream is sponsored by UPMC.

Patrons may sign up for the livestream at pittsburghopera.org/YardbirdRSVP to both receive a reminder email before the broadcast with links to view the livestream and to unlock premium content, including the official program book and the Pre-Opera talk podcast.

While the body of the legendary tormented saxophonist Charlie "Yardbird" Parker lies unidentified in a New York City morgue, his ghost travels back to Birdland, the famed New York City jazz club named after him. As he struggles to complete his final masterpiece, the great bebop innovator revisits the demons, inspirations, and women who have both fueled and hindered his creative genius.

With the aid of his strong mother Addie, three of his four wives, and his partner in the bebop jazz revolution, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie will struggle to calm his demons and write his new masterpiece before his body is identified in the morgue and this gig is up forever. Can he do it, or will the demons of his past rear their ugly heads?

Join a freeform expedition into the mind, heart, and personal purgatory of the man they called Yardbird.

Music by Daniel Schnyder; Libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly; Music Director Antony Walker conducts; Tomé Cousin directs.

Learn more at pittsburghopera.org.