At cock’s crow on the centenary of Bird’s birth, around the Arhat-like bronze head that honors him in his hometown of Kansas City, African drumming will roust the sun; and in the evening, conjured by the Orchestra Filarmonica Salernitana Giuseppe Verdi and a congeries of Italian jazzmen, Bird’s shade will join those of former denizens Boccaccio and Wagner on the Belvedere of the 12th-century Villa Rufalo in Ravello, overlooking the decidedly un-Kansan Amalfi Coast and the velvet Tyrrhenian Sea. —E.E.
Other Charlie Parker centennial celebrations to note: the Dutch team of Ineke and Postma will launch their new disk at at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis (September 5) and sundry other venues; WKCR, surely the only radio station in the world that devotes a full hour to Bird each weekday, will cap its annual three-day Lester Young-Charlie Parker birthday broadcast (August 27–29) with a five-day Parkerpalooza; the 92nd Street Y will stream a two-day festival of Parker-themed film, art, talk, music, and dance; and New York’s annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival will go online, offering archival footage and a virtual walking tour of Bird’s old roosts in and around Tompkins Square Park (August 28–29).