Man. 14 years old. I’ve watched a bunch of videos from The Henry Acker Trio and the precision and skill this young man plays with is nothing short of astonishing. But it’s not just that he’s got chops: it is entirely clear that Henry Acker loves what he’s doing and that passion comes through in every song. Henry plays with his father, Victor, and his uncle Dana. He has won multiple awards and you should definitely be at The Burren to check this show out on Sunday.
As a preview, here’s a song from Henry’s debut CD, 14. It’s a Charlie Parker tune, “Segment”:
Henry and Victor, “both love Charlie Parker and were looking for one of his tunes that was not over played such as Donna Lee or Ornithology. It comes right out of the gate swinging with one of Parker’s magnificent bebop melody lines of which he was the master. We decided to record all of the CD live and used either first or second takes for everything. What you hear is exactly what happened after the count off. Although “Segment” is not really part of the gypsy jazz repertoire, Charlie Parker tunes are always welcome as part of the genre. To make the tune swing harder we used much more of a traditional jazz approach.”
