from Portraits in Jazz
Valerie Capers (b. 1935)
About the Composer
Valerie Capers (b. 1935) is an American composer, pianist, jazz artist, and educator whose music bridges the worlds of classical music and jazz with remarkable fluency. Drawing upon jazz, blues, gospel, spirituals, and classical traditions, she has developed a distinctive musical voice that reflects the richness and diversity of American musical life. Throughout her career, she has championed music that communicates directly with audiences while remaining both sophisticated and deeply personal.
Born in New York City, Capers lost her sight at the age of six and went on to become the first blind graduate of the Juilliard School. Alongside her distinguished career as an educator and composer, she established herself as an accomplished jazz pianist, performing alongside artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Paquito D’Rivera. Her firsthand experience as both a classical and jazz musician lends her compositions an authenticity that comes from moving fluently between these two musical traditions.
Capers’s music is characterized by lyrical warmth, rhythmic vitality, and expressive generosity. Whether writing for the concert hall or the jazz stage, she creates music that is both inviting and artistically compelling. Her work demonstrates how the rich traditions of jazz and classical music can inform one another, resulting in a musical language that is vibrant, deeply personal, and unmistakably American.
About the Piece
Blue-Bird is the eleventh piece in Capers’s Portraits in Jazz, a collection of twelve piano works introducing classically trained pianists to a wide variety of jazz styles. Designed for intermediate players of any age, the pieces serve both as engaging concert works and as studies in the rhythms, harmonies, and expressive language of jazz. Throughout the collection, Capers draws upon the styles of legendary performers while encouraging pianists to think beyond the conventions of classical performance.
Dedicated to the legendary saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, Blue-Bird pays tribute to the bebop style that he helped define. Capers describes the work as a miniature theme and variations, built upon a twelve-bar blues form, with each successive chorus transforming the opening material before returning to the original theme.
Blue-Bird presents the intermediate classically trained pianist with the challenge of capturing the syncopated accents and rhythmic flexibility that define the bebop style. Through this joyful tribute to Charlie Parker, Capers demonstrates how the traditions of jazz and classical piano playing can come together naturally, inviting performers and listeners alike into the vibrant world of American jazz.
Explore Further
Sheet Music
The score is available from the publisher.
Myriad Voices 