$5.00 Suggested Donation

Experience "Bird", a thoughtful portrayal of jazz legend Charlie "Bird" Parker in an historic creative setting at The Packing House.

"Directed by Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood, a well-known, long-standing jazz aficionado, delivers a compassionate portrait of jazz visionary Charlie "Yardbird" Parker. Eastwood, who won a Golden Globe for Best Director for this film, also paints a vivid portrait of the jazz world in all its complexity. Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winner Forest Whitaker, as Parker, provides a multifaceted performance that helps provide an understanding of the man's genius, and tragedy." (Rotten Tomatoes)

"What the film does best is capture a general sense of the tight, self-protective and in some ways dangerously insular jazz world. It deals soberingly with Parker's drug habit (he was an addict from his middle teens until his death, in 1955, as a 34-year-old so dissipated that the coroner estimated his age at 50 or 60) and with the ulcers and liver trouble that sometimes made Scotch and milk his drink of choice. Parker's role as, in Nat Hentoff's words, ''the paradigm of the jazzman-as-victim'' is well-established here, better so than the underlying pressures that led him in that direction." (Maslin, The New York Times, 9/26/1988)

"Be-bop, the music forged by Charlie Parker and the handful of musicians who could keep up with him in the early 1940's, pushed jazz into a modern era of high speed, fragmentation, and grace under pressure. It ushered in faster tempos and more angular melodies; above the tunes, improvisers like Parker moved to the outer reaches of harmony, revamping established notions of consonance and dissonance. His groups tossed off asymmetrical pieces with an offhand precision that camouflaged their complexity. But Parker's own brilliance as an improviser matched his structural innovations; his solos sprinted and zigzagged across the beat in long, twisting lines, but they could also ease into sultry, heartfelt blues." (Harmetz, The New York Times, 1/17/1988)

“'Bird' wisely does not attempt to “explain” Parker’s music by connecting experiences with musical discoveries. This is a film of music, not about it, and one of the most extraordinary things about it is that we are really, literally, hearing Parker on the soundtrack." (Roger Ebert, 10/14/1988)

This film showing is hosted by the Friends of The Mill Works. Suggested donation $5.00. Snacks and soft drinks available. "BYOB" - Beer and Wine ONLY with $5.00 corkage/bottle fee.

Call 518-791-9474 for information and table reservations.