![]() “He is the leading living exponent of the piano style established by Bud Powell. …ĭetroit jazz critic Mark Stryker, who observed him closely for a lifetime, has described Harris as the music’s “conscience.” Though Harris’s diminished chords may never return to common practice, future generations still have a chance to warm themselves with his deep wisdom-and, perhaps, keep a piece of that old-school conscience eternal.” There are only three diminished chords, but between them they modulate smoothly to any of the twelve tonics. Every three notes is a minor third, and after four, that brings us back to “do.” Play all four minor thirds at once, and you have a diminished chord. Harris had discovered some of those secrets himself, like mathematicians sometimes discover new properties of numbers all of us have known since birth. Jazz pianist Barry Harris, who died last week, was born in Detroit in 1929, heard the Big Band era in person, and devoted himself to a lifetime of bebop. “For nine decades, a lonely outpost held out defiant hope for the return of the diminished chord. © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected all rights reserved. ![]()
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