Every day next week at midday on Radio 3

Composer of the Week presenter Donald Macleod, aided by Geoffrey Smith will present five hour-long programes next week on Bebop.

In Monday ‘s programme they start by exploring the roots of Bebop in the work of a varied cast of pioneers: pianist Art Tatum, guitarist Charlie Christian, tenor sax players Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins and trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Then it’s off to Minton’s Playhouse, the after-hours Harlem club and all-purpose Bebop laboratory, where some of the most innovative jazz musicians of the day let their hair down and jammed together into the small hours, gradually forging the new style through their collective experimentation. Finally, the two central figures of the Bebop revolution emerge from the crowd – alto sax player Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie – first separately, in earlier, pre-Bop incarnations, then playing together, explosively, in two early Bebop classics, ‘Groovin’ High’ and ‘Salt Peanuts’.

MONDAY’S PLAYLIST IS HERE

In Tuesday ‘s programme, they focus on the ‘yin and yang’ of Bebop, Charlie Parker and the man he once referred to as ‘the other half of my heartbeat’, Dizzy Gillespie.

In Wednesday‘s programme, they visit the engine-room of jazz – the rhythm section – and in particular, Bebop’s two key drummers, Kenny ‘Klook-Mop’ Clarke and Max Roach.

Thursday‘s programme homes in on the 88 keys of the piano, under the phenomenal fingers of Bebop’s two most influential pianists: Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk.

On Friday , to conclude the week, they take a look beyond Bebop and explore the various shoots that have sprouted from the original stem, in the hands of such musicians as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Wynton Marsalis and finally Sonny Rollins.

The producer is Chris Barstow in Cardiff. The words above are a copy/paste of info supplied by Radio 3.