Editing Bud Powell (section)

==Musical style==
Powell was one of the key contributors to the development of bebop. Patrick Burnette notes that Powell and [[Elmo Hope]] were "credited with creating the modern piano style of single-note right hand runs and left-handed chordal punctuation."<ref name=":14" /> According to drummer Kenny Clarke, many of Monk's compositions were written in collaboration with Powell, and even pianists who did not adopt the bebop style, such as [[Duke Ellington]], visited his home in Willow Grove regularly to hear him play.{{Sfn|Paudras|1998|p=303}}

Powell was, in turn, influenced primarily by Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum.<ref name=":4" /> His virtuosity led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano, and [[Bill Cunliffe]] noted that he was "the first pianist to take Charlie Parker's language and adapt it" to the instrument,<ref name="Chat">{{cite web |date=February 29, 2004 |title=A Fireside Chat With Bill Cunliffe |url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/a-fireside-chat-with-bill-cunliffe-bill-cunliffe-by-aaj-staff.php |access-date=March 30, 2019 |website=All About Jazz}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Moon |first=Tom |title=[[1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die]] |publisher=Workman Publishing Company |year=2008 |page=608}}</ref> although this assessment has been criticized.{{Sfn|Paudras|1998|p=300}} Critics agree, however, that he was one of the few musicians on any instrument who could match Parker's musically complex approach to bop.<ref name=":4" /> His solos featured an attacking style similar to that of horn players, contained frequent [[arpeggio]]s, and utilized much [[chromaticism]].<ref name=":2" /> Don Heckman of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' noted his ability to rove "freely across harmonic borders" with "loping melodic lines".<ref name=":9">{{Cite web |last=Heckman |first=Don |date=June 2, 2002 |title=Piano Spoken Here: Bud Powell and His Descendants |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jun-02-ca-spotlight2-story.html |access-date=December 6, 2023 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}</ref> Other critics have taken a more complex approach, noting that Powell's style shifted significantly during his career, possibly connected to traumatic events in his personal life.<ref name=":13" /> According to critic [[Harvey Pekar]], the most significant shift occurred in 1954, when his playing became "economical" and "fragmented" due to the influence of Monk.<ref name=":13" />

Despite Powell's emphasis on right-hand soloing throughout his career, he was also able to play fluently with his left hand. After one of Art Tatum's performances at Birdland in 1950, Powell told the pianist that he had made mistakes, to which Tatum responded that Powell was "just a right-hand piano player." Powell was scheduled to play the following night, and he played one of the tunes entirely with his left hand in order to prove his technical ability.<ref name="Gitler 1966 p=112" /> That said, his technical ability has been described by some as erratic. Christopher Finch, who heard him play with a young French bassist late 1962, noted that he struggled to play even basic melodies with which the bassist was unfamiliar, but when Powell asked the bassist to pick a tune he knew, his technique immediately recovered. According to Finch, Powell's technical ability depended significantly upon the quality of the musicians with whom he was playing.{{Sfn|Pullman|1994|pp=85–86}}

His [[Comping (jazz)|comping]] often consisted of single bass notes outlining the [[root (music)|root]] and [[Perfect fifth|fifth]]. He used [[Voicing (music)|voicings]] of the root and the [[Tenth (music)|tenth]] or the root with the [[minor seventh]].<ref name="Owens1996">{{cite book|last=Owens|first=Thomas|title=Bebop: The Music and Its Players |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RYBZPO3oe9UC&pg=PA148 |access-date=March 29, 2019 |date=May 23, 1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-535553-6 |page=148}}</ref> In some voicings and melodic ideas, such as "Un Poco Loco", he used [[Polytonality|bitonality]] and extremely [[extended chord]]s such a [[Major seventh chord|raised fifteenth]], while in solo breaks such as that of "Celia" he used [[sixteenth note|16th-note]] chord arpeggiations to transition from melody to improvisation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=DeMotta |first=David |date=February 1, 2015 |title=The Contributions of Earl "Bud" Powell to the Modern Jazz Style |url=https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/545 |journal=Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects}}</ref>

Tom Piazza noted for ''[[The New York Times]]'' that Powell played with "a Romantic's imagination [but] a classicist's precision and [with] an awesome, sometimes frightening, intensity" and was a "lifelong Bach devotee". The titles of his compositions referenced the breadth of his knowledge of culture and music history including one song title in Latin, "Tempus Fugit".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Piazza |first=Tom |date=January 1, 1995 |title=JAZZ VIEW; How Two Pianists Remade (And Upheld) a Tradition |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/arts/jazz-view-how-two-pianists-remade-and-upheld-a-tradition.html |access-date=November 26, 2023 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Powell wrote poems for each of his compositions, but most of his poetry was lost, and many of the poems were neither written on paper nor copyrighted.{{Sfn|Paudras|1998|pp=178–79}}