Prom 62: A Celebration of Charlie Parker

“None of us have any idea what Parker would have been playing by now: he died 50 years ago. As an optimist I like to think he would have evolved,” Django Bates writes in the programme for Prom 62, remembering a critic’s harsh words regarding a previous Parker-centric performance with a slightly nervous defensiveness. But there’s more in that than there might first appear.