Preceded byLive Jazz Performance by Lewis Jordan and Mark Izu *Advance tickets areavailable at BASS/Ticketmaster outlets (phone 762-BASS), and at PFA. Tickets will be sold at the UCTheater the night of the show only. Please note: UAM Member reservations will not be taken for thisscreening. This event is presented in association with Jazz in the City. We extend our thanks to Clint Eastwood, Warner Bros. and Joe Hyams, SeniorVice President, Special Projects at Warner Bros., for making this benefit premiere possible. We also wishto thank Pierre Rissient, Bill Lanese and KJAZ for their generous assistance and support. Charlie "Yardbird" Parker: Dizzy Gillespie called him "the other half of myheartbeat." He was probably the most influential of jazz musicians, who freed the music with the precisionof improvisation. If that seems a contradiction, Charlie Parker was a walking contradiction: a visionaryartist whose personal life became a spiral of self-abuse that led to his early death at the age of 34. Bird isa labor of love by a jazz buff and lifelong Charlie Parker admirer, Clint Eastwood. Eastwood envisioned thefilm as "a small, very personal story... I'm interested in what made the man tick in his relationships, andwhat made him so amazingly inventive," he has stated. Jazz critic Leonard Feather calls Bird "the firsttruly authentic motion picture made about an actual jazz musician." The film won an award at Cannes forthe technical wizardry with which jazz musician Lennie Niehaus isolated Parker solos from tapes andrecordings and grafted on, in state-of-the-art fashion, new accompaniment by contemporary musicians.Forest Whitaker (who also won an award at Cannes) portrays Parker for his ironies, as a genius whoseAchilles' heel is an addictive personality; a kind man and, as others have noted about him, a chameleon.Variety's Todd McCarthy hails the film as "sensitively acted, beautifully planned visually and dynamitemusically."