JTA - The Jazz Transcript Authority: Faruq Z. Bey

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2021

VOLUME NINE NUMBER THREE

FARUQ Z. BEY

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

William Parker

(January 23-29)

Jason Palmer

(January 30-February 6)

Living Colour

(February 7-13)

Christian Sands

(February 14-20)

Henry Grimes

(February 21-27)

Charles Tolliver

(February 28-March 6)

Kendrick Scott

(March 7-March 13)

Marcus Strickland

(March 14-20)

Seth Parker Woods

(March 21-27)

Ulysses Owens

(March 28-April 3)

Steve Nelson

(April 4-10)

Steve Wilson

(April 11-17)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/william-parker-mn0000959346/biography

William Parker

(b. January 10, 1952)

Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey

Based in New York City, William Parker is the pre-eminent bassist in modern free jazz, and one of that scene's major catalysts. In addition to more than 50 titles under his own name -- and more than 100 as a sideman and collaborator -- he is also an accomplished poet, painter, and cultural critic. Parker co-founded the Improvisers Collective with his wife, the renowned dancer, choreographer, and poet Patricia Nicholson. Parker was the fulcrum of the collective; he played in nearly all of its various ad hoc groups and led the Collective's enormous big band, which later recorded under his name as the Little Huey Creative Music Ensemble. An important document of their beginnings was the 1995 Black Saint offering In Order to Survive. As a bassist, Parker is possessed of a formidable technique, albeit an unconventional one; it can be heard as a lead instrument in trios with Carter and Hamid Drake (Painter's Spring), duos with the drummer (Piercing the Veil), dozens of recordings with David S. Ware (including Flight of I and Shakti), and Matthew Shipp, including The Flow of X, Strata, and Our Lady of the Flowers. While leading various ensembles, Parker has explored and paid tribute to major artists from the Great Black Music tradition including Curtis Mayfield (I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Music of Curtis Mayfield) and Duke Ellington (Essence of Ellington), with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. He has also explored jazz subgenres such as soul-jazz (Uncle Joe's Spirit House, with his organ quartet), the union of spoken word and jazz (Zen Mountains/Zen Streets: A Duet for Poet & Improvised Bass), vocal music via the box set Voices Fall from the Sky, and large-scale conceptual jazz works such as Alphaville Suite.

Parker grew up in New York City. Very early in his career he formed an association with Cecil Taylor; he played Carnegie Hall with the pianist in the early '70s. Parker released his first album as a leader in 1979. Through the Acceptance of the Mystery Peace (on Parker's own Centering Records) featured saxophonists Charles Brackeen and Jemeel Moondoc, and violinist Billy Bang. Parker became Taylor's regular bassist in the '80s. He played on several of the pianist's European records, and on Taylor's 1989 domestic major-label release, In Florescence, on A&M. Parker left Taylor in the early '90s and began working more often as a leader. He recorded a big-band record for his own label, then began releasing a series of CDs for other companies, significantly Black Saint. Beside his activities as a leader and community organizer, Parker would continue to work as a sideman through the mid-'90s; he remained the bassist of choice for downtown free players like David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, and Rob Brown. The year 2000 was particularly busy for Parker as he recorded three of his own dates, including Painter's Spring and O'Neal's Porch, and appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman. The following year, in the wake of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra performed Distillation of Souls, dedicated to its victims, and released the live Raincoat in the River, Vol. 1: ICA Concert. He and drummer Hamid Drake issued the duet offering Piercing the Veil through AUM Fidelity, and his Song Cycle (with vocalists Lisa Sokolov, Ellen Christi, and pianist Yuko Fujiyama) was offered by Boxholder. In 2002, Parker appeared on no less than 15 albums, among them were Shipp's Nu Bop, Ware's Freedom Suite, and Rob Brown's Round the Bend, as well as four of his own trio and quintet dates. The latter, Raining on the Moon, featured vocalist Leena Conquest; he also released Corn Meal Dance.

In 2003, he toured England with Spring Heel Jack, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Shipp, and J. Spaceman. The album Live appeared from Thirsty Ear. Parker toured for much of the year, and released several concert recordings, some cut some years earlier. They included Spontaneous with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra at CBGB from the year before, and Never Too Late But Always Too Early with Drake and Peter Brötzmann, captured in 2001. The William Parker Violin Trio issued Scrapbook, and he appeared on Shipp's Equilibrium and numerous other recordings.

Parker's prolific pace continued unabated. The breadth and depth of his various projects as a leader, collaborator, and sideman proved inexhaustible. In 2005, Thirsty Ear released a duet with Shipp entitled Luc's Lantern (named for the French film director Jean Luc Godard), while Eremite issued Fred Anderson's Blue Winter with Parker and Drake in the rhythm section. The following year saw Parker play on Kidd Jordan's Palm of Soul. He also released a duet recording with Drake entitled Beans, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra's For Percy Heath, and Requiem by the William Parker Bass Quartet featuring Charles Gayle.

In 2007, Rai Trade released The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield while Parker (who'd begun the project in 2001 and evolved it over subsequent years) was performing the music of Fats Waller and Duke Ellington in a dance piece called "On Their Shoulders We're Still Dancing," choreographed by Patricia Nicholson. His own quartet saw the Petit Oiseux album released while Tamarindo, a trio group with Tony Malaby and Nasheet Waits, appeared in a self-titled offering from Clean Feed, and Rogue Art released Alphaville Suite: Music Inspired by the Jean Luc Godard Film by the William Parker Double Quartet. The bassist was named one of the "50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time" by Time Out New York, received a New York State Music Fund commission for the long-form work Double Sunrise Over Neptune, and performed at Vision Festival XII in August. It was released by AUM Fidelity in 2008. The same year, Beyond Quantum with Anthony Braxton and Milford Graves was released by Tzadik, and the archival CT: The Dance Project with Cecil Taylor and Masashi Harada was issued by FMP. Among the Parker-related recordings to appear in 2009 were Farmers by Nature with Gerald Cleaver and Craig Taborn, Washed Away, Live at the Sunside with Drake and Sophia Domancich, Moondoc's complete Muntu Recordings box set, and the David S. Ware Quartet Live in Vilnius.

As the second decade of the new century began, Parker released I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, an expanded double-disc compilation of recordings from 2001-2010, via AUM Fidelity. The album made many jazz critics' year-end best-of lists. Centering Records released his Organ Quartet's Uncle Joe's Spirit House, and Parker appeared on over a dozen albums. The year 2011 held many highlights, not least among them Centering's three-disc solo bass box Crumbling in the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake and Conversations from Rogue Art, which featured the bassist's solos and interviews with other musicians. Farmers by Nature also issued their sophomore effort, Out of This World's Distortions. No Business released the archival box set Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987 in 2012, while Altitude, a new recording, appeared from the bassist, Cleaver, and Joe Morris. The double-disc Essence of Ellington (billed to the William Parker Orchestra) was issued by Centering. The critical acclaim for the latter was universal.

In 2013, Parker was the recipient of a Doris Duke Artist Award. His quartet recorded Live in Wroclove, and he led the trio session Tender Exploration. AUM Fidelity released the eight-disc box set Wood Flute Songs: Anthology Live 2006-2012, which showcased his various ensembles. Parker appeared on many archival recordings in 2014 as well as in new trio settings led by James Brandon Lewis (Divine Travels) and Ivo Perelman (Book of Sound). The Farmers by Nature band also issued its third album, Love and Ghosts.

Parker revived Raining on the Moon for 2015's The Great Spirit. AUM Fidelity released the three-disc archival box For Those Who Are, Still. Conversations II: Dialogues & Monologues was issued by Rogue Art, and collected duet performances with Jordan interspersed with more artist interview snippets. Live at NHKM, in collaboration with Konstruct, was another of the more than 15 recordings the bassist's name was attached to that year. In spring 2016, Centering brought out Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, a series of songs with pianist Cooper-Moore and Sokolov on vocals. In July, Song Sentimentale appeared from Otoroku. It was compiled from three nights of concerts at Cafe Oto by Brötzmann, Parker, and Drake, and released as two separate volumes in different formats. Each contained a unique track listing. The following year Parker was an integral part of two important recording on as many labels: Art of the Improv Trio, Vol. 4 with saxophonist Ivo Perelman and drummer Cleaver on Leo, and Toxic: This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People with Polish saxophonist Mat Walerian and pianist Matthew Shipp on ESP-Disk. Parker also issued the co-led Bass Duo with Italian classical bassist Stefano Scodanibbio for Aum Fidelity. In 2018, via his Centering label, Parker released the three-disc box set Voices Fall from the Sky, a premier of two long-form works for singers (the title track and "Essence"), as well as a disc of previously issued songs.

A year later, Parker and his oldest flagship group, In Order to Survive, issued the double-length Live/ Shapeshifter, a double length program cut live in performance at Shapeshifter Lab, Brooklyn, N.Y. Co-produced by Parker and label boss Steven Joerg, it featured all-new compositions, including the extended suite "Eternal Is the Voice of Love" and "Newark" (dedicated to early group member, trombonist Grachan Moncur III), as well as a new iteration of the band's theme. The band included original members pianist Cooper Moore, and alto saxophonist Rob Brown as well as drummer Hamid Drake, who joined in 2012. The set was released in June 2019.

http://www.williamparker.net/#ceremony-section

http://www.williamparker.net/biography#long-bio

Bio

1952

Born in the Bronx
1971

Enters the music scene playing Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Hilly’s on The Bowery, Salt and Pepper, Club and The Baby Grand
1973

Forms the collective The Music Ensemble

Performs with Cooper-Moore, Billy Bang, Billy Higgins, Frank Lowe, Sunny Murray, David S. Ware, and others at Ornette Coleman’s Artist House, Studio Rivbea, Studio WE, and the East
1974

Performs with Cecil Taylor’s big band at Carnegie Hall

Co-founds Centering Music/Dance Ensemble with choreographer Patricia Nicholson
1975

Moves to LES

Performs at the Five Spot with Don Cherry
1976

Composes and presents ballet, "Dawn Voice" and many dance/music concerts at St. Mark's on the Bowery and Environ
1977

Composes and presents ballets "Liberation Folk Suite" and "Sun Garden" for mixed ensemble with reeds, strings, and voice
1978

Participates in CETA Artist Program with Theatre for Forgotten
1979

Composes and presents "Light Slices My Heart," a ballet with string quartet, and music for voices and small ensemble, inspired by Aztec poetry
1980

Joins the Cecil Taylor Unit

Composes and performs “Night Skies,” a modern ballet in collaboration with choreographer Patricia Nicholson
1981

Concerts for solo bass in Berlin

Composes “Peace Suite,” a composition for large ensemble, voices, dance, and poetry
1982

Premieres “A Thousand Cranes,” an opera for orchestra, dance, and a chorus of 1000 school children, performed at opening of UN Second Special Session for Disarmament
1983

Premieres composition “Inheritance” for three voices, bassoon, alto flute, double bass, and dance in Downtown Music Series at Third Street Music School
1984

Co-organizes “Sound Unity,” a five-day international festival at CUANDO, New York City
1985

Composes music for documentary shown on PBS “Community Dig”
1986-87

Composes and presents “Vision Peace and Battle Cries,” a modern ballet for large orchestra with poetry and voice in collaboration with choreographer Patricia Nicholson at La MaMa

Co-organizes Lower East Side Music Festival
1988-89

Receives New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Artist Fellowship

Co-organizes Second Sound Unity Festival, New York City
1991

Participates in Residency at the Rotterdam Conservatory and Residency at Bennington College, Bennington, VT
1992

Composes and presents song cycle for solo voice and music for piano and flute, solo piano, and piano and percussion
1993

Founds the In Order to Survive sextet

Performs concerts and conducts workshops with Roscoe Mitchell at Cal Arts
1994

Founds The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra

Composes new music for Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater, as well as arranging and re-orchestrating music from Dvorak’s opera “Rusalka”
1995

The Village Voice characterizes William Parker as “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time”

Premieres 10 compositions in an 8-week season with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra at the Knitting Factory

Composes music for the dance-drama “The Shadow People”
1998

The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and Dance performs “Mass for the Healing of the World” in Verona
1999

Performs with Peter Brotzmann’s Die Like a Dog Quartet
2000

“Kaleidoscope” premieres at the Fifth Annual Vision Festival

Receives New York State Council on the Arts Commissioning Award
2001

Forms the William Parker Quartet with Hamid Drake

Records O’Neal’s Porch, recognized by New York Times as one of the year’s Best Jazz Albums
2002

“Universal Tonality,” new orchestra piece commissioned by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, premieres at Roulette in Brooklyn

Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe praises William “as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz”
2003

Participates in residency at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, CA

Other Minds Festival commissions William for “Spirit Catcher for Four Musicians and Tape,” in San Francisco, CA
2004

Participates in Visiting Artist Program at Haystack in Deer Isle, Maine

Premiers Bass Quartet with Alan Silva, Sirone, Henry Grimes, and Charles Gayle at the Vision Festival
2005

Plays at Tel Aviv Jazz Festival with Roy Campbell’s Pyramid Trio

Musica Jazz votes William Jazz Musician of the Year in Italy

Teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music
2006

Premieres “Lakota Chamber Music” for woodwinds and “Light In The Hall of Whispers” for string ensemble

Performs with theatre, dance and music piece “Looking For Cookie Gilchrist” in collaboration with Patricia Nicholson
2007

Premieres “Double Sunrise Over Neptune” at Vision Festival XII

Premieres multimedia piece, “Expanded Humanity” with students from Humanities Preparatory Academy (NYC) and the Amistad Academy (Hartford, CT)

Receives "Musician of the Year" award in Italy

Time Out New York names Parker one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time”

Receives Nameless Sound Resounding Vision Award, Houston, TX
2008

Performs in Milano with the Curtis Mayfield Project

Tours Europe with Tony Malaby and Nasheet Waits
2009

Lectures at political/music conference at Sons d’hiver Festival in Paris

Performs with Milford Graves in the Azore Islands
2010

Performs live soundtrack for Jean Luc Godard’s film Alphaville at Nuovo Cinema, Bologna

Performs with The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Philadelphia
2011

Performs live soundtrack to film by Sylvain George Courtisane in Paris

Records string quartet plus saxophone improvisations with Daniel Carter for film “On Being Native”
2012

Premiers The Essence of Ellington w/ 15 piece orchestra in Milano
2013

Receives the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award for influence and impact on the creative jazz scene over the last 40 years

NY Premier of Alphaville Suite performed live to Jean Luc Godard’s film

Premiers “Ceremonies,” written for Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in Poland
2014

Receives the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award for influence and impact on the creative jazz scene over the last 40 years

Premiers new composition dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., "Flower in a Stain Glass Window," over four days in Philadelphia
2015

Premiers new composition dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., "Flower in a Stain Glass Window," with over 35 artists--musicians, actors/actresses, singers, and performers

William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City, heralded by The Village Voice as, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.”

In addition to recording over 150 albums, he has published six books and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.

Parker’s current bands include the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, In Order to Survive, Raining on the Moon, Stan’s Hat Flapping in the Wind, and the Cosmic Mountain Quartet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore. Throughout his career he has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, and David S. Ware, among others.

Biography

1951
1971
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986-87
1988-89
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014

1951

Born in the Bronx
1971

Enters the music scene playing Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Hilly’s on The Bowery, Salt and Pepper, Club and The Baby Grand
1973

Forms the collective The Music Ensemble

Performs with Cooper-Moore, Billy Bang, Billy Higgins, Frank Lowe, Sunny Murray, David S. Ware, and others at Ornette Coleman’s Artist House, Studio Rivbea, Studio WE, and the East
1974

Performs with Cecil Taylor’s big band at Carnegie Hall

Co-founds Centering Music/Dance Ensemble with choreographer Patricia Nicholson
1975

Moves to LES

Performs at the Five Spot with Don Cherry
1976

Composes and presents ballet, "Dawn Voice" and many dance/music concerts at St. Mark's on the Bowery and Environ
1977

Composes and presents ballets "Liberation Folk Suite" and "Sun Garden" for mixed ensemble with reeds, strings, and voice
1978

Participates in CETA Artist Program with Theatre for Forgotten
1979

Composes and presents "Light Slices My Heart," a ballet with string quartet, and music for voices and small ensemble, inspired by Aztec poetry
1980

Joins the Cecil Taylor Unit

Composes and performs “Night Skies,” a modern ballet in collaboration with choreographer Patricia Nicholson
1981

Concerts for solo bass in Berlin

Composes “Peace Suite,” a composition for large ensemble, voices, dance, and poetry
1982

Premieres “A Thousand Cranes,” an opera for orchestra, dance, and a chorus of 1000 school children, performed at opening of UN Second Special Session for Disarmament
1983

Premieres composition “Inheritance” for three voices, bassoon, alto flute, double bass, and dance in Downtown Music Series at Third Street Music School
1984

Co-organizes “Sound Unity,” a five-day international festival at CUANDO, New York City
1985

Composes music for documentary shown on PBS “Community Dig”
1986-87

Composes and presents “Vision Peace and Battle Cries,” a modern ballet for large orchestra with poetry and voice in collaboration with choreographer Patricia Nicholson at La MaMa

Co-organizes Lower East Side Music Festival
1988-89

Receives New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Artist Fellowship

Co-organizes Second Sound Unity Festival, New York City
1991

Participates in Residency at the Rotterdam Conservatory and Residency at Bennington College, Bennington, VT
1992

Composes and presents song cycle for solo voice and music for piano and flute, solo piano, and piano and percussion
1993

Founds the In Order to Survive sextet

Performs concerts and conducts workshops with Roscoe Mitchell at Cal Arts
1994

Founds The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra

Composes new music for Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater, as well as arranging and re-orchestrating music from Dvorak’s opera “Rusalka”
1995

The Village Voice characterizes William Parker as “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time”

Premieres 10 compositions in an 8-week season with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra at the Knitting Factory

Composes music for the dance-drama “The Shadow People”
1998

The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and Dance performs “Mass for the Healing of the World” in Verona
1999

Performs with Peter Brotzmann’s Die Like a Dog Quartet
2000

“Kaleidoscope” premieres at the Fifth Annual Vision Festival

Receives New York State Council on the Arts Commissioning Award
2001

Forms the William Parker Quartet with Hamid Drake

Records O’Neal’s Porch, recognized by New York Times as one of the year’s Best Jazz Albums
2002

“Universal Tonality,” new orchestra piece commissioned by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, premieres at Roulette in Brooklyn

Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe praises William “as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz”
2003

Participates in residency at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, CA

Other Minds Festival commissions William for “Spirit Catcher for Four Musicians and Tape,” in San Francisco, CA
2004

Participates in Visiting Artist Program at Haystack in Deer Isle, Maine

Premiers Bass Quartet with Alan Silva, Sirone, Henry Grimes, and Charles Gayle at the Vision Festival
2005

Plays at Tel Aviv Jazz Festival with Roy Campbell’s Pyramid Trio

Musica Jazz votes William Jazz Musician of the Year in Italy

Teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music
2006

Premieres “Lakota Chamber Music” for woodwinds and “Light In The Hall of Whispers” for string ensemble

Performs with theatre, dance and music piece “Looking For Cookie Gilchrist” in collaboration with Patricia Nicholson
2007

Premieres “Double Sunrise Over Neptune” at Vision Festival XII

Premieres multimedia piece, “Expanded Humanity” with students from Humanities Preparatory Academy (NYC) and the Amistad Academy (Hartford, CT)

Receives "Musician of the Year" award in Italy

Time Out New York names Parker one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time”

Receives Nameless Sound Resounding Vision Award, Houston, TX
2008

Performs in Milano with the Curtis Mayfield Project

Tours Europe with Tony Malaby and Nasheet Waits
2009

Lectures at political/music conference at Sons d’hiver Festival in Paris

Performs with Milford Graves in the Azore Islands
2010

Performs live soundtrack for Jean Luc Godard’s film Alphaville at Nuovo Cinema, Bologna

Performs with The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Philadelphia
2011

Performs live soundtrack to film by Sylvain George Courtisane in Paris

Records string quartet plus saxophone improvisations with Daniel Carter for film “On Being Native”
2012

Premiers The Essence of Ellington w/ 15 piece orchestra in Milano
2013

Receives the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award for influence and impact on the creative jazz scene over the last 40 years

NY Premier of Alphaville Suite performed live to Jean Luc Godard’s film

Premiers “Ceremonies,” written for Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in Poland
2014

Receives the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award for influence and impact on the creative jazz scene over the last 40 years

Premiers new composition dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., "Flower in a Stain Glass Window," over four days in Philadelphia

Short bio

William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City. He has recorded over 150 albums, published six books, and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.

He has been called “one of the most inventive bassists/leaders since [Charles] Mingus,” and “the creative heir to Jimmy Garrison and Paul Chambers...directly influenced by ‘60s avant-gardists like Sirone, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva.” The Village Voice called him, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time” and Time Out New York named him one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time.”

Parker’s current active bands include the large-band Little Huey Creative Orchestra, the Raining on the Moon Sextet, the In Order to Survive Quartet, Stan’s Hat Flapping in the Wind, the Cosmic Mountain Quintet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore, as well as a deep and ongoing solo bass study. His recordings have long been documented by the AUM Fidelity record label and on his own Centering Records, among others. He also has a duo project "Hope Cries For Justice" with Patricia Nicholson Parker which combines music, story telling, poetry and dance

Over the decades, Parker has developed a reputation as a connector and hub of information concerning the history of creative music, recently culminating in a two hefty volumes of interviews with over 60 avant-garde and creative musicians, Conversations I & II. He is also the subject of an exhaustive 468-page “sessionography” that documents thousands of performances and recording sessions, a remarkable chronicle of his prolificness as an active artist.

He has been a key figure in the New York and European creative music scenes since the 1970s, and has worked all over the world. He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Peter Kowald, and David S. Ware, among many others.

William Parker works all over the world but he always returns to New York’s Lower East Side, where he has lived since 1975.

Long bio

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. Born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, he studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul West. During Parker’s prolific career, he has recorded over 150 albums, had countless celebrated stage appearances, and helped shaped the jazz scene for both his peers and the youth. In 2013, Parker received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in recognition of his influence and impact on the creative jazz scene over the last 40 years.

William entered the music scene in 1971, playing at Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Hilly’s on The Bowery, and The Baby Grand. By the age of 20, Parker quickly became a highly sought after bassist, playing with established musicians such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, Billy Higgins, and Sunny Murray. Projects with dancer and choreographer Patricia Nicholson have created a huge repertoire of composed music for multiple ensembles ranging from solo works to big band projects. In 1980, he became a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, in which he played a prominent role for over a decade.

Since the beginning of his career, William Parker has commanded a unique degree of respect from his fellow musicians and critics alike. In 1995, the Village Voice characterized William Parker as "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time." In addition to his work with artists in the United States, he has developed a strong relationship with musicians in the European Improvised Music scene such as Peter Kowald, Peter Brotzmann, Han Bennink, Tony Oxley, Derek Bailey, John Tchicai, Louis Sclavis, and Louis Moholo.

William Parker began recording in 1994 and founded the ensembles In Order To Survive and The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. In 2001, he released O’Neal’s Porch, which marked a turn toward a more universal sound working with drummer Hamid Drake. The Raining on the Moon Quintet followed, adding vocalist Leena Conquest and the Quartet from O’Neal’s Porch. Most notable among many recent projects is the Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield.

As Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe stated in July 2002, “William Parker has emerged as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz.” Parker has consistently worked in many of the most important groups within this genre, including his own. He currently leads The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, In Order to Survive, Raining on the Moon, Stan’s Hat Flapping in the Wind, and The Cosmic Mountain Quartet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore.

Parker has released over 20 albums under his leadership, most reaching #1 on the CMJ charts. In 1995, he debuted The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra with the release of Flowers Grow In My Room on the Centering label. Recent years saw the release of several monumental box sets, including 2013’s Wood Flute Songs and 2015’s For Those Who Are, Still, highlighting the work of Parker’s many groups and large ensembles. His recordings appear on the Aum Fidelity label and his own Centering Music, among others.

These releases and their success showcase William Parker as an outstanding composer and bandleader. From the beginning of his musical career, William Parker has been prolific; composing music for almost every group with whom he has performed. His compositions span the range of operas, oratorios, ballets, film scores, and soliloquies for solo instruments. He has also successfully explored diverse concepts in instrumentation for large and small ensembles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Parker_(musician)

William Parker (musician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Parker (born January 10, 1952) is an American free jazz double bassist, multi-instrumentalist, poet and composer

Biography

Parker was born in the Bronx, New York City. He was not formally trained as a classical player, though he did study with Jimmy Garrison, Richard Davis, and Wilbur Ware and learned the tradition. Parker is one of few jazz bassists who frequently plays arco. He also plays several other instruments from around the world, including the West African kora.

While Parker has been active since the early 1970s; he has had a higher public profile since the early 1990s. He is a prominent and influential musician in the New York City experimental jazz scene,^[1] and has regularly appeared at music festivals around the world, including the Guelph Jazz Festival in southern Ontario.

Parker first came to public attention with pianist Cecil Taylor. He has long been a member of saxophonist David S. Ware's quartet and in Peter Brötzmann's groups. Parker also played with various other groups that included Paul Murphy (who would fill in for Philly Joe Jones) whenever he was in town shopping for new drum sticks.

He is a member of the cooperative Other Dimensions In Music. Together with his wife, Patricia Nicholson Parker, he organizes the annual Vision Festival in New York City.

The album Sound Unity by the William Parker Quartet was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005. His August 2008 CD Double Sunrise over Neptune was listed as one of the top 10 2008 (through end of August) Jazz CDs at Amazon.^[2] Also released in 2008, Petit Oiseau was chosen as one of the best jazz disks of 2008 by The Wall Street Journal,^[3] the BBC's Radio Three,^[4] The Village Voice,^[5] and PopMatters.^[6]

In 2006, Parker was awarded the Resounding Vision Award from Nameless Sound. In March 2007, his book, Who Owns Music?, was published by buddy's knife jazzedition in Cologne, Germany. Who Owns Music? assembles his political thoughts, poems, and musicological essays. In June 2011, Parker's second book, Conversations, a collection of interviews with notable free jazz musicians and forward thinkers, mainly from the African-American community, was published by Rogue Art.^[7]

Discography

As leader

Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace (Centering, 1981)
Flowers Grow in My Room (Centering, 1994)
In Order to Survive (Black Saint, 1995) - with In Order to Survive
Testimony (Zero In, 1995) - solo
Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy (Homestead, 1996) - with In Order to Survive
Sunrise in the Tone World (AUM Fidelity, 1997) - with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Lifting the Sanctions (No More, 1997)
Mass for the Healing of the World (Black Saint, 1998 [2004]) - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Zen Mountains/Zen Streets: A Duet For Poet & Improvised Bass (Boxholder, 1998)
The Peach Orchard (AUM Fidelity, 1998) - with In Order to Survive
Posium Pendasem (FMP, 1999) - In Order to Survive
Fractured Dimensions (FMP, 1999 [2003])
Mayor of Punkville (AUM Fidelity, 2000) - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Painter's Spring (Thirsty Ear, 2000) - with Hamid Drake & Daniel Carter
Piercing the Veil (AUM Fidelity, 2000) - with Hamid Drake
O'Neal's Porch (AUM Fidelity, 2000)
Song Cycle (Boxholder, 2001)
Bob's Pink Cadillac (Eremite, 2002) - Clarinet Trio
The Last Dances (Ayler Records, 2002 [2007]) - with Hamid Drake & Anders Gahnold
Raincoat in the River (Eremite, 2002) - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
... and William Danced (Ayler Records, 2002)
Raining on the Moon (Thirsty Ear, 2002)
Eloping with the Sun (Riti, 2003) - with Joe Morris & Hamid Drake
Scrapbook (Thirsty Ear, 2003) - Violin Trio
Spontaneous (Splasc(H), 2003) - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Luc's Lantern (Thirsty Ear, 2004 [2005])
Requiem (Splasc(H), 2004 [2006]) - Bass Quartet with Charles Gayle
Sound Unity (AUM Fidelity, 2005)
Long Hidden: The Olmec Series (AUM Fidelity, 2006)
For Percy Heath (Victo, 2006) - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Alphaville Suite (RogueArt, 2007)
The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield (Rai Trade, 2007) - with The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield project
Summer Snow (AUM Fidelity, 2007) - with Hamid Drake
Corn Meal Dance (AUM Fidelity, 2007) - with Raining on the Moon
Great Spirit (AUM Fidelity, 2007 [2015]) - with Raining on the Moon
Double Sunrise Over Neptune (AUM Fidelity, 2007)
Petit Oiseau (AUM Fidelity, 2008)
Beyond Quantum (Tzadik, 2008) - with Anthony Braxton and Milford Graves
Winter Sun Crying (NEOS Jazz, 2009 [2011]) - with the ICI Ensemble
Tender Exploration (Jazzwerkstatt, 2010 [2013]) - with Hamid Drake & Conny Bauer
Prism (Ultramarine, 2010) - with Ninni Morgia
I Plan to Stay a Believer (AUM Fidelity, 2010) - with The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield project
Uncle Joe's Spirit House (Centering, 2010) - William Parker Organ Quartet
Essence of Ellington (Centering, 2012) - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Centering. Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987 (No Business, 2012)
Live In Wroclove (ForTune, 2013)
Wood Flute Songs (AUM Fidelity, 2013)
For Those Who Are, Still (AUM Fidelity, 2015)
To Roy (Intakt, 2015) - with Oliver Lake
Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind (Centering, 2016) - with Cooper-Moore & Lisa Sokolov
Bass Duo (Centering, 2017) -- duos with Stefano Scodanibbio; recorded Udin&Jazz 2008 Festival in Udine, Italy
Meditation/Resurrection (AUM Fidelity, 2017)
Lake of Light (Compositions for Aquasonics) (Gotta Let It Out, 2018)
Voices Fall From The Sky (Centering Records, 2018) - with widely ranging ensembles & singers
Flower In a Stained-Glass Window -&- The Blinking of The Ear (Centering Records, 2018)
Live/Shapeshifter (AUM Fidelity, 2019) - with In Order to Survive

As sideman

With Fred Anderson

2 Days in April (Eremite, 2000)
Blue Winter (Eremite, 2005)

With Derek Bailey and John Zorn

Harras (Avant, 1993)

With Billy Bang

The Fire from Within (Soul Note, 1981)
Live at Carlos 1 (Soul Note, 1984)
Medicine Buddha (No Business, 2009 [2014])

With Albert Beger

Evolving Silence, Vol. 1 (2005)
Evolving Silence, Vol. 2 (2006)

With Peter Brötzmann

Sacred Scrape, Secret Response (Rastascan, 1994)
Nothung (In Tone Music, 2002)
Never Too Late But Always Too Early (Eremite, 2003)
The Bishop's Move (Les Disques Victo, 2004)

With Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet

Stone/Water (Okka Disk, 2002)
Short Visit To Nowhere (Okka Disk, 2002)
Broken English (Okka Disk, 2002)

With Rob Brown

Breath Rhyme (Silkheart Records, 1990)
High Wire (Soul Note, 1996)
Round the Bend (Bleu Regard, 2002)
The Big Picture (Marge, 2004)
Crown Trunk Root Funk (AUM Fidelity, 2008)

With Roy Campbell, Joe McPhee & Warren Smith

Tribute to Albert Ayler Live at the Dynamo (Marge, 2009)

With Daniel Carter and Federico Ughi

LIVE! (577 Records, 2017)
Navajo Sunrise (Rudi Records. 2013)
The Dream (577 Records, 2006)

With Gerald Cleaver and Craig Taborn

Farmers by Nature (AUM Fidelity, 2009)
Out of This World's Distortions (AUM Fidelity, 2011)
Love and Ghosts (AUM Fidelity, 2014)

With 'Die Like A Dog' Quartet

Die Like a Dog: Fragments of Music, Life and Death of Albert Ayler (FMP, 1994)
Close Up (FMP, 1994 [2011])
Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 1 (FMP, 1998)
Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 2 (FMP, 1999)
From Valley to Valley (Eremite, 1999)
Aoyama Crows (FMP, 2002)

With Bill Dixon

Thoughts (Soul Note, 1985 [1987])
Vade Mecum (Soul Note, 1994)
Vade Mecum II (Soul Note, 1994)

With Marco Eneidi

Cherry Box (Eremite, 2000)

With Charles Gayle

Touchin' on Trane (FMP, 1991 [1993])
Translations (Silkheart, 1993)
Raining Fire (Silkheart, 1993)
Blue Shadows (Silkheart, 1993 [2008])
More Live at the Knitting Factory (Knitting Factory, 1993)
Consecration (Black Saint, 1993)
Daily Bread (Black Saint, 1995)

With Frode Gjerstad

Seeing New York From The Ear (Cadence Jazz Records, 1996)
Remember To Forget (Circulasione Totale, 1998)
Ultima (Cadence Jazz Records, 1999)
The Other Side (Ayler Records, 2006)
On Reade Street (FMR Records, 2008)

With Alan Glover

Kings Of Infinite Space (Omolade Music 2006)
The Juice Quartet Archives (Omolade Music 2010)

With Wayne Horvitz

Some Order, Long Understood (Black Saint, 1982)

With Kidd Jordan

Palm Of Soul (AUM Fidelity, 2006)

With Gianni Lenoci

Secret Garden (Silta)

With Jimmy Lyons

Wee Sneezawee (Black Saint, 1983)

With Raphe Malik

Last Set: Live at the 1369 Jazz Club (Boxholder, 2004)
ConSequences (Eremite, 1999)
Companions (Eremite, 2002)

With Michael Marcus

Under The Wire (Enja, 1990)

With Thollem McDonas & Nels Cline

The Gowanus Session (Porter, 2012)

With Roscoe Mitchell

This Dance Is for Steve McCall (Black Saint, 1993)
Nine to Get Ready (ECM, 1997)

With Jemeel Moondoc

First Feeding (Muntu, 1977)
The Evening of the Blue Men (Muntu, 1979)
Konstanze's Delight (Soul Note, 1983)
Nostalgia in Times Square (Soul Note, 1986)
New World Pygmies (Eremite, 1999)
New World Pygmies vol. 2 (Eremite, 2002)
Live at Glenn Miller Café Vol 1 (Ayler, 2002)
Live in Paris (Cadence, 2003)

With Joe Morris

Illuminate (Leo, 1995)
Elsewhere (Homestead, 1996)
Invisible Weave (No More, 1997)
Altitude (AUM Fidelity, 2012)

With Other Dimensions In Music

Other Dimensions In Music (Silkheart, 1990)
Now! (Aum Fidelity, 1998)
Time Is of the Essence Is Beyond Time (Aum Fidelity, 2000)
Live at the Sunset (Marge, 2007)
Kaiso Stories (Silkheart, 2011)

With Ivo Perelman

Cama de Terra (Homestead, 1996)
En Adir (Music & Arts, 1997)
Sound Hierarchy (Music & Arts, 1997)
Serendipity (Leo, 2013)
Book of Sound (Leo, 2014)

With Matthew Shipp

Points (Silkheart, 1992)
Circular Temple (Quinton, 1992)
Zo (Rise, 1994)
Critical Mass (2.13.61, 1995)
Prism (Brinkman, 1996)
The Flow of X (2.13.61, 1997)
By the Law of Music (HatART, 1997)
The Multiplication Table (hatOLOGY, 1998)
Strata (hatOLOGY, 1998)
DNA (Thirsty Ear, 1999)
Magnetism (Bleu Regard, 1999)
Pastoral Composure (Thirsty Ear, 2000)
Expansion, Power, Release (hatOLOGY, 2001)
New Orbit (Thirsty Ear, 2001)
Equilibrium (Thirsty Ear, 2003)
Our Lady of the Flowers (RogueArt, 2015)

With Steve Swell

Swimming in a Galaxy of Goodwill and Sorrow (RogueArt, 2007)

With Cecil Taylor

The Eighth (HatHut, 1986)
Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) (Soul Note, 1987)
Olu Iwa (Soul Note, 1987)
Live in Bologna (Leo, 1987)
Live in Vienna (Leo, 1987)
Tzotzil/Mummers/Tzotzil (Leo, 1988)
Alms/Tiergarten (Spree) (FMP, 1988)
In Florescence (A&M, 1989)
Looking (Berlin Version) Corona (FMP, 1989)
Looking (Berlin Version) The Feel Trio (FMP, 1989)
Celebrated Blazons (FMP, 1990)
2 Ts for a Lovely T, (Codanza Records, 1990 [2002])
CT: The Dance Project (FMP, 1990 [2008])

With John Blum (pianist)

Astrogeny (Eremite, 2005)

With David S Ware

Passage to Music (Silkheart 1988)
Great Bliss, Vol. 1 (Silkheart 1991)
Great Bliss, Vol. 2 (Silkheart 1991)
Flight of I (DIW 1992)
Third Ear Recitation (DIW 1992)
Earthquation (DIW 1994)
Cryptology (Homestead 1995)
Oblations and Blessings (Silkheart, 1996)
DAO (Homestead 1996)
Godspelized (DIW, 1996)
Wisdom of Uncertainty (AUM Fidelity, 1997)
Go See the World (Columbia, 1998)
Surrendered (Columbia, 2000)
Corridors & Parallels (AUM Fidelity, 2001)
Freedom Suite (AUM Fidelity, 2002)
Threads (Thirsty Ear, 2003)
Live in the World (Thirsty Ear, 2004)
BalladWare (Thirsty Ear, 1999 [2006])
Renunciation (AUM Fidelity, 2007)
Live in Vilnius (NoBusiness Records 2007)
Shakti (AUM Fidelity, 2009)
Onecept (AUM Fidelity, 2009)
Planetary Unknown (AUM 2010)
Live at Jazzfestival Saalfelden 2011 (AUM 2011)

Books

Who Owns Music? (buddy's knife jazzedition, 2007)
Conversations (RogueArt, 2010)

Films

2001 - Inside Out in the Open (2001). Directed by Alan Roth. Asymmetric Pictures. Distributed by Third World Newsreel.

References

"William Parker Conversations". Retrieved 25 January 2012.

External links

Blumenfeld, Larry (2002-05-26). "Music; A Father to the Followers of Free Jazz". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-01-05. Mr. Parker and his wife, the dancer Patricia Nicholson, began the [Vision Festival] seven years ago. Yet his influence runs much deeper than the recording studio or the bandstand. He is something of a father figure, dispensing life lessons as well as wisdom about musical technique.

"Best Jazz of 2008". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2012-06-25.

Blumenfeld, Larry (2008-12-27). "The Best Musicians Span Continents, Generations, by Larry Blumenfeld". Online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2012-06-25.

"Jazz on 3, Best Albums of the Year". Bbc.co.uk. 2008-12-22. Retrieved 2012-06-25.

Francis Davis (2008-12-31). "2008 ''Voice'' Jazz Poll Winners". Villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2012-06-25.

Layman, Will. "The Best Jazz of 2008, by Will Layman". Popmatters.com. Retrieved 2012-06-25.

https://www.newmusicusa.org/profile/williamparker/

NEWMUSIC USA

WILLIAM PARKER

My Awarded Projects

Identity: Freedom — Dave Burrell, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and others

Arts for Art and The Kitchen present FreeJazz ensembles improvising across disciplines, from music, dance, and poetry to political discourse

Created By: The Kitchen

New York, NY

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. William entered the music scene in 1971, playing at Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Hilly’s on The Bowery, and The Baby Grand. By the age of 20, Parker quickly became a highly sought after bassist, playing with established musicians such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, Billy Higgins, and Sunny Murray. Projects with dancer and choreographer Patricia Nicholson have created a huge repertoire of composed music for multiple ensembles ranging from solo works to big band projects. In 1980, he became a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, in which he played a prominent role for over a decade.

In 1995, the Village Voice characterized William Parker as “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” In addition to his work with artists in the United States, he has developed a strong relationship with musicians in the European Improvised Music scene such as Peter Kowald, Peter Brotzmann, Han Bennink, Tony Oxley, Derek Bailey, John Tchicai, Louis Sclavis, and Louis Moholo.

In 2013, Parker received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in recognition of his influence and impact on the creative jazz scene over the last 40 years.

Meditation/Resurrection

Series of excerpts from William Parker’s August 2017 album “Meditation/Resurrection.”
Disc 1 lineup: Jalalu Kalvert Nelson, trumpet; Rob Brown, alto saxophone; William Parker, bass and Hamid Drake, drums
Disc 2 lineup: Rob Brown, alto saxophone; Cooper-Moore, piano; William Parker, bass and Hamid Drake, drums

Under_Line Benefit Concert

Under_Line Benefit Concert on December 4, 2012, featuring William Parker, Hamiet Bluiett, Charles Gayle, Christian McBride, Cooper-Moore, and Jason Hwang.

http://www.thirstyear.com/artists/william-parker/

Blue Series artists consistently deliver world-class performances that rarely fail to push the creative envelope.

JAZZIZ

William Parker

William entered the music scene in 1971, playing at Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Hilly’s on The Bowery, and The Baby Grand. By the age of 20, Parker quickly became a highly sought after bassist, playing with established musicians such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, Billy Higgins, and Sunny Murray. Early projects with dancer and choreographer Patricia Nicholson created a huge repertoire of composed music for multiple ensembles ranging from solo works to big band projects. In 1980, he became a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, in which he played a prominent role for over a decade.

Parker has released over 20 albums under his leadership, most reaching #1 on the CMJ charts. In 1995, he debuted The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra with the release of Flowers Grow In My Room on the Centering label. Recent years saw the release of several monumental box sets, including 2013’s Wood Flute Songs and 2015’s For Those Who Are, Still, highlighting the work of Parker’s many groups and large ensembles. His recordings appear on Aum Fidelity, Thirsty Ear and his own Centering Music, among others.

“He (William Parker) is something of a father figure,” stated Larry Blumenfeld in the New York Times. He has looked for and encouraged young talent and has been a mentor to many younger musicians. Most importantly for Mr. Parker have been the workshops/performances for young people that he has conducted in both the USA and Europe. These have been for him among some of his most important projects and greatest successes.

https://downbeat.com/archives/detail/william-parker-his-own-new-thing

William Parker, Classic Interview

by David French | October 2008

**Bassist William Parker is reaching an audience beyond the commercially restrictive categorization he refers to as the “avant-garde ghetto.” (Photo: Courtesy of the Artist)**

William Parker talks like he plays, with an improvisatory grace, free wheeling through long series of interconnected ideas, following tangents but never getting lost. Traces of the 1960s emerge in the bassist’s speech—the energized idealism, humanism and questioning of the status quo. Parker is no throwback, but his vision of how to live and play music to make the world a better place dates to his high school years in the Bronx. Against the societal upheavals of the ’60s, Parker absorbed the mystical poetry of Kenneth Patchen, read about world religions and listened to the soundtracks of French New Wave films and jazz’s “New Thing.”

“Once I found out that music could uplift people and spiritually tap into things and help people get into their optimum self—to better their personalities, better their spirit, better their understanding, better their idea of why we’re here on Earth and why we want to live—that was the musical vision,” Parker said. “As far as what the music sounded like—that came later. ... It’s about uplifting people, getting into their core and inspiring people to be themselves, whatever that is going to be. That came through John Coltrane.”

Coltrane died when he was 40 years old, having made his revolutionary musical statements at a relatively young age. Parker, at 56 years old—when many musicians already have produced the work for which they will be best remembered—is ascendant. A visionary artist at the peak of his powers, full-throttle in a streak of new creative growth, Parker appears to be creating his own “New Thing.”

The bassist has emerged as a major artist relatively late in his career, through a stream of new recordings that marry free improvisation to driving folk forms and memorable melodies. He stands now as one of the most adventurous and prolific bandleaders in jazz, at a point in his career when he can realize almost any project he conceives. And he finally is reaching an audience beyond the commercially restrictive categorization he refers to as the “avant-garde ghetto.”

According to pianist Matthew Shipp, who moved to New York as a young musician wanting to play with Parker and since has worked with him extensively, Parker is a “spiritual beacon” for musicians, and what makes him great is his ability to be himself.

“He bypasses a lot of the blocks that people have in the music,” Shipp said. “He can be himself. You would think that would be the easiest thing for a musician—to be able to be himself—yet that’s the hardest thing, because we all have so much crap put into our minds for so many years that it’s actually hard to be yourself.”

Parker has been a fixture of downtown music since the early ’70s. He studied with Jimmy Garrison, Wilbur Ware and Richard Davis when he was young, made his recording debut with Frank Lowe in 1973, and became the bassist of choice for musicians like Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware and Shipp. One of his most important functions was, perhaps, to act as a bridge between the first generation avant-garde players, with whom he has worked extensively, and younger musicians who were trying to build upon that foundation and do something new. But as a leader and composer, Parker developed more slowly, releasing his first album in 1981, but not gaining momentum until the ’90s.

“From 1972 up until 1992, I was in training. I was in training to learn how to respond to sound, to learn how to play with many different people in many different situations,” Parker said. “It doesn’t mean that in 1972 I wasn’t writing music. I was doing a lot of different things, but it’s almost like the time came when the stew was ready—the idea that it’s time for you to make another commitment to your music.”

Parker gained increasing attention in the ’90s with his big band, the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, and the quartet In Order to Survive. He also became prominent as an activist and organizer with his wife, dancer Patricia Nicholson, with whom he founded the Improvisers Collective and the Vision Festival. He is modest on the subject of the Vision Festival, which he has anchored as a musician through the years, giving credit to Nicholson as the true organizer.

To some extent, it might also have been Parker’s modesty that kept him from stepping out earlier as a leader.

“What I’m realizing now is that to be a leader you can’t hide your light beneath a blanket,” he said. “If you have something to say, it’s not egotistical to let your light shine.”

That light came through clearly on Parker’s 2001 quartet album, O’Neal’s Porch (AUM Fidelity), which launched a new phase in his career. It featured alto saxophonist Rob Brown and trumpeter Lewis Barnes spinning out sunny melodies, then chasing one another like children in a fun house, with Parker and drummer Hamid Drake creating a constantly changing, infectious dance around them. Going into recording the album, Parker had been hoping to capture a directness that in some ways harkened back to the music of his youth.

“I wanted clarity,” Parker said. “It came to me that what was underneath all this music—even though we were listening to the so-called avant-garde black revolutionary cosmic music, we were also listening to Lee Morgan. We were also listening to Andrew Hill, Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis. If you use the term black mystery music, or black music, you can use everything that existed from field hollers to electronics in your music. You’ve got the right to do all of these things. What you don’t have the right to do is to copy and put out something mundane, to put out something that’s already been said.

“O’Neal’s Porch was the beginning of a new direction,” Parker continued. “The idea was to use catchy heads that one has heard before, but it’s not exactly what you heard before. People, in their musical memory, will hear it and be able to relate to it because it’s already planted inside them. It’s all coming from the world of folk music and Tin Pan Alley.”

Listeners got it. O’Neal’s Porch landed in the DownBeat Critics Poll and on a lot of critics’ top 10 lists. It won Parker new fans who could embrace jazz that had the energy and mystery of the avant-garde— the songs often had no set chord changes and went where the musicians went—but that also had hummable melodies and infectious rhythms.

“The same elements were always there,” said Rob Brown, who has played with Parker since the mid-’80s. “It’s just that the emphasis has shifted. There’s a lot more tunes that are singable and retain their form, rather than the free style of the ’80s. The free part is still there, it’s just shifted a little bit. There’s more groove, it’s more accessible than it was then.”

The following year, Parker delivered another breakthrough, Raining On The Moon (Thirsty Ear), an album of original songs and lyrics performed by the same quartet with vocalist Leena Conquest. It had no obvious precedent. For those who thought of Parker primarily as a free-jazz bassist and mixer of medicine too strong for more conservative jazz fans, it offered something unimaginable. Parker, with the help of a singer unknown in the jazz world, seemed to reinvent and revitalize the concept of jazz vocals with an inviting collection of songs simultaneously simple and profound, loose and structured.

“I’ve been writing words since I was a teenager,” Parker said. “Before I was writing music, actually. So, we took the quartet and wrote some songs. Our society is dominated by pop music, by music and words put together. We hear it and we always relate to it. But with my version of using words and music together, you have a political message, social message, spiritual message and a musical message all in one.”

As surprising as these albums were, to those following Parker’s career, it seemed like in the wake of O’Neal’s Porch, almost every new release was a surprise—and there were many of them. These included a clarinet trio with Perry Robinson and Walter Perkins; a violin trio with Billy Bang and percussionist Drake; a piano trio with Eri Yamamoto and Michael Thompson; an even more accessible followup to Raining On The Moon with Yamamoto added to the band; an album with a new septet, the Olmec Group, which draws on traditional Latin rhythms; an album with his usual quartet, plus a modified string quartet. In addition, three duet albums with Drake allowed Parker to stretch out on bass and the double reeds, percussion and stringed instruments he has collected from all over the world. There also were three releases from the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, a group that always delivers surprises.

Perhaps the most unusual project for Parker was last year’s The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield (Rai Trade/Radio 3). Parker’s octet for this project featured Conquest singing, as well as poet Amiri Baraka improvising off of Mayfield’s lyrics.

“I wanted to do some of Curtis Mayfield’s songs, because we listened to him coming up,” Parker said. “He was like the backdrop to the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of his songs have to do with black people, have to do with their feelings, with pride. And so, I said I’d like to do some of his music.”

Parker’s newest releases include a sprightly quartet record, Petit Ouiseu (AUM Fidelity), which again features the O’Neal’s Porch lineup, and Double Sunrise Over Neptune (AUM Fidelity), a performance of a large orchestra. Different from Little Huey, this group includes members of the quartet, a second drummer, a string quartet, guitar, banjo, oud, Parker playing double reeds and donso ngoni—a traditional stringed instrument from Mali—and Indian classical vocalist Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay.

As much attention as he has received for his small-group work, some of Parker’s best and most ambitious recordings are the large-ensemble pieces, among them Double Sunrise, 2001’s Raincoat In The River (Eremite) and 2003’s Mass For The Healing Of The World (Black Saint).

Parker’s orchestras are organized in such a way that the musicians are free to add to the compositions.

“The music was put in my hands,” he said. “So, I’m responsible for organizing the concept of the band. That particular concept is to allow every person to be themselves. I keep defining free music as, ‘You are free to use whatever elements exist in this world of sound. You have the freedom to choose.’ If I write something and you can find something better to play, you don’t have to play what I wrote. Do your own thing. To be your strongest self you have to be yourself. You’ve got to become one with the music, let it flow.”

To achieve this, one of the things Parker had to do was to teach his musicians a system of self-conduction.

“They had written material, but the trumpet section could do improvised readings; they could create their own lines and conduct themselves in and out as they wished,” he said. “If you played and rehearsed enough, the idea was to have a big band that worked like a trio. You could trust the trumpets to come in when they wanted to, when they had something to add. The rule was that what you want to add always supersedes the written material. Basically, you get people together like a village; they’ll learn to get along. They’ll learn to do what they’ve got to do.”

What this sounds like can range from a delicate interaction between two instruments or a thunderous orchestral shout that can have you hanging onto your chair. But there is always a pulse that ties it together.

“You got to have snap, crackle and pop,” he said. “You got to have rhythm—Aretha Franklin, James Brown—all that in there, but you can also play music that they call ‘abstract.’ If you listen to the crickets, if you listen to the birds, underneath it is a heartbeat, and that’s got to be in there.”

Double Sunrise, a four-part suite, is one of the most heady and seductive of all of Parker’s large-group works, and nowhere more so than in the second section, “Lights Of Lake George.” The nearly half-hour piece has a simple, repeating bass line laid down as a foundation. The string quartet moves on top of the bass, two drummers keep a constant dance of sound going, soloists improvise, the double reeds raise up the hair on the back of your neck and Bandyopadhyay sings Persian mantras.

Double Sunrise also offers an indication of the direction Parker is headed, a path that can be traced back to his high school epiphany and his time working with Cherry, whose music was similarly folk inflected. The blending of cultures is at the core of Parker’s vision, whether it is hip-hop and pastoral poetry, art forms such as dance and painting or the blending of jazz with music and instruments from around the world, as on Double Sunrise. Parker calls his concept “universal tonality.”

“The vision is still being formulated,” he said. “It’s getting closer now. It has something to do with playing the bass, but also the donso ngoni from Mali, the shakuhachi from Japan, the double reeds from all over the world. Those things, those non-Western, non-piano based musics, have got to be included to get the full portrait of the gift of music. I don’t think I can find my true vision without including all the sounds.

“Like they say, ‘No child left behind.’ I say, ‘No sound left behind.’ That’s part of what will eventually be the vision for me, the vision of universal tonality, universal sound. I say universal meaning—anybody in the world can listen to it and immediately know what’s going on and immediately feel it. No intellectualism. It’s got to have heartbeat and breath. That’s what people relate to.”

“I would assume in some ways he sees himself as a folk musician,” Shipp said. “He’s not going for complexity for the sake of complexity. He is going for a beautiful, elemental statement. He wants to play the blues. Even if he’s not playing the blues, that’s basically what he wants to do in music—some touching, folk, universal statement.”

Parker takes his groups to Europe regularly, and continues an impressive amount of side projects, including the long-running improvised quartet Other Dimensions in Music with trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr., saxophonist Daniel Carter and drummer Rashid Bakr. Parker stresses that improvisation is as important as composition, and much of his discography is made up improvised collaborations.

“You don’t know what’s coming next,” Parker said. “You think you’ve played everything, then you realize that every time you think you’ve played everything, you haven’t even scratched the surface. You never can run out of things to play.”

Parker also has appeared and recorded with hip-hop and rock groups like The Roots, Yo La Tengo and Akron/Family. He has published his poetry and writings on music, and is working on another book, a collection of interviews with other musicians. But most days, on top of practicing and gigging, he is at home writing music.

“This period of working is fruitful,” Parker said. “I don’t know if it’s the same as before, because I was thinking of ideas and writing them down. But when you actually do it, it becomes more vibrant. Now, I’m writing string quartets. I did one in December, and I’m doing another one. Now, I’ll try and write a piano concerto. It’s a challenge. I commission myself to write a piece or to develop something. Once you tap into this thing and dig into it, you find it’s a bottomless pit. It just keeps coming out.”

As hard as he works, Parker only sees himself as the vehicle through which the music is delivered and is careful not to try to control too much.

“I don’t want to get too close to it,” he said. “Every time you do something, even though it’s a composition, when you go to play it, it always takes on a new life. It never fails. And it’s always something you never expected. Not once has something sounded the way I thought it was going to sound. My role is to let it flow, to let it come to life, not try to guide it. Because the wisdom of the music is much wiser that I could ever be. I’m not going to tell it where to go.” DB

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/william-parker-pays-tribute-to-henry-grimes

William Parker pays tribute to Henry Grimes (1935–2020)

WIRE

The world's greatest print and online music magazine. Independent since 1982

April 2020

by William Parker

Henry Grimes. By Peter Gannushkin — **Henry Grimes. Photo by Peter Gannushkin**

“Henry was not hired to fill the role of a bass player; he was hired to be Henry,” declares fellow bassist William Parker

Henry Grimes was one of greatest musicians in the last century – a bassist and deep listener who opened the door to his inner world every time he was on the bandstand.

He came out of the Philadelphia jazz scene that included a plethora of first generation bass players: Jimmy Garrison, Reggie Workman, Jymie Merritt, Percy Heath and Art Davis. Henry was right in the middle holding up his own, not missing a step with these giants. I was told by the drummer Sonny Murray that many bassists would come by Henry’s house in South Philly for lessons “because Henry Grimes knew his stuff”. He played with many of the more established musicians like Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus and Thelonius Monk, to the new fire music of Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Frank Wright, Charles Tyler and Don Cherry, and to the looking-ahead-sounds of pianist Cecil Taylor. From what I heard on the recordings Henry could have been on all the Blue Note records that came out in the 1960s: he certainly had the credentials and creativity to do so. I personally feel there was something too real in his sound, the way he constructed bass lines always had a freedom that elevated the music into a different dimension. Perhaps a zone only the brave dare go.

Henry’s sound was thick – a resonant driving pulsating, pushing walking concept. Taking things to the edge, even in the beauty. Swinging and dancing a black sound. Always hearing differently, one could hear the earth, the soil, sweat and toil of the people in his sound. A sound laced in the blues and the purples: listen to Henry on the Archie Shepp album On This Night. The colours of the gospel of freedom, freedom of sound and speech, freedom of rhythm, freedom to dance inside and play textures; to drop one note and turn it into a sound. Sound of clouds, sound of thunder, singing out to write poems called bass lines and before the end of the day transforming back to space words and utterances walking in, filling the frame up with sound. Behind all of this is a love for music like no other. Deep intuition, listening, feeling and becoming one with a higher consciousness. Listen to Henry on the Don Cherry Record Where Is Brooklyn?, or just about anything that he recorded in the 1960s – it’s all brilliant. It all soars and roars, opening up the gates of heaven.

From the beginning to the end Henry Grimes loved music dearly. His story is huge. Some say he was missing in action between 1967–2003. I say he was not missing, we just didn’t know where he was. He was living his life as a human being. This is the other side music. When he returned on the scene in 2003 he came back with a different perspective. He was somehow able to tap directly into the source of music that was inside him. Henry was not hired to fill the role of a bass player; he was hired to be Henry. This is the ultimate accomplishment of a musician to be oneself and be respected for that. Henry returned and was able to travel around the world playing and living the musical life. This life, this was the blessing and gift to us all.

Thank God for the manifestation that was Henry Grimes.

https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/williamparker

William Parker

Biography
Articles
News

Since the beginning of his career, William Parker has commanded a unique degree of respect from his fellow musicians and critics alike. In 1995, the Village Voice characterized William Parker as “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” In addition to his work with artists in the United States, he has developed a strong relationship with musicians in the European Improvised Music scene such as Peter Kowald, Peter Brotzmann, Han Bennink, Tony Oxley, Derek Bailey, John Tchicai, Louis Sclavis, and Louis Moholo.

A passionate educator, William Parker has taught at Bennington College, NYU, The New England Conservatory of Music, Cal Arts, New School University and Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. He has also taught music workshops throughout the world including Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and the Lower East Side. Parker is a theorist and author of several books including Who Owns Music?, Conversations I & II, Voices in the First Person, Scrapbook: Notes and Blueprints, Sound Journal, and The Mayor of Punkville. Additionally, he has released three volumes of poetry and a theatre piece titled Music and the Shadow People. en a mentor to some of the younger musicians. Most importantly, for Mr. Parker has been the workshops/ performances for young people that he has conducted, both in the USA and in Europe. This has been for him amongst some of his most important work and greatest successes.”

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/universal-tonality-the-life-and-music-of-william-parker__18995

Universal Tonality:

The Life and Music of William Parker

by MARK CORROTO
January 15, 2021

AllAboutJazz

Universal Tonality:

The Life And Music Of William Parker
Cisco Bradley
384 Pages

ISBN: # 978147801014
Duke University Press
2021

Who is William Parker? He is a jazz bassist, yes. But he is also a band leader, composer, writer & poet, community organizer, peace activist, and cultural anthropologist. Cisco Bradley endeavors to pull the diverse parts of the artist's life together in this first ever biography of Parker. It is a monumental task, and like the dozens of biographies of Louis Armstrong that have been published, it is a good start.

Born on January 10, 1952 at the Bronx—Lebanon Hospital into a family of four, which included his older brother Thomas Jr., there were no outward signs of what would become of this child. Unlike Miles Davis, who grew up in an affluent family (his father was a dentist) Parker came from blue collar working class stock. The book details Parker's interests from sports to nature and poetry. It appears he was a shy child, and he had a very active inner life. All of which is evidenced by his journaling and poetry. The question remains, how did his experience transform into the jazz icon he has become today?

Bradley finds clues in Parker's DNA, tracing his roots back to his family's life in North and South Carolina and before that their ancestor's experience in West Africa. Whether or not you believe that the tragedies and triumphs of a people can be encoded into the DNA of future generations, you cannot disregard the connections Parker's music has with the African diaspora and his ancestors intermingling with the Native American. His love of the natural world seems to have been inherited, because his experience in the inner—city was bereft of mountains and wild rivers. Parker summoned these, along with his observations of clouds and sky to free himself of a predestined life of manual labor. Against the admonitions of his teachers and wishes of his mother, he maintained a mind open to exploration and free thinking. His maturity came in the 1960s concurrent with the Black Power and Black Arts movements. By 1970 his musical heroes John Coltrane and Albert Ayler were dead, but their spark lit a flame in Parker that burns bright today.

The book details the mostly self-taught bassist's indefatigable work ethic and unceasing pursuit of experience and learning. What boggles the mind is just how he survived the near—death of jazz in the 1970s when the record industry was fixated on rock music and even more astonishing was his ability to endure the wave of neoconservative jazz of the 1980s and '90s. During those nearly three decades record companies, critics, and venues eschewed anything that wasn't retrogressive or conservatively polished. Parker though was a true believer, along with Frank Lowe, Jemeel Moondoc, Noah Howard, Rashied Ali, Billy Bang, Daniel Carter, Milford Graves, to name but a few, kept the fires burning.

His big break came with an invitation to join Cecil Taylor's band. Taylor was the biggest name in free jazz in the United States, and Parker's exposure to the pianist's creative process would leave an everlasting imprint. Additionally, their tours of Europe opened the door to collaborations with the likes of Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Joëlle Léandre, Derek Bailey, and Peter Kowald.

The bulk of this biography focuses on Parker's ensembles, In Order To Survive, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, William Parker Quartet, and Raining On The Moon. Bradley does an excellent job at detailing concerts and recordings by these ensembles. He also touches on Parker's tributes to Duke Ellington (his father's favorite) and Curtis Mayfield. What is noticeably absent here are the details, and maybe more important, the tales of the bassist's work with Charles Gayle and William Parker, two giants of free jazz. A more robust portrait might have been given with more details from AUM Fidelity records chief Steven Joerg, who has single-handedly kept Parker's music in print, as would more content from musicians Parker has mentored, like pianist Matthew Shipp whose music owes much to the bassist.

To fully understand who William Parker is, investigate the nearly 500 recordings he has participated in, along with Parker's own interviews with other musicians Conversations (RogueArt, 2011) and Conversations II Dialogues & Monologues (RogueArt, 2015) and deep dive into The William Parker Sessionography... A Work in Progress by Rick Lopez (Centering Records, 2014). Cisco Bradley's Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker is though, a great place to start.

http://www.ayler.com/and-william-danced-review-7.html

ayler records

All sorts of jazz, free jazz and improv.

Never for money, always for love.

William Parker Trio... and William Danced

Kurt Gottschalk, AllAboutJazz

William Parker and Hamid Drake have become about the tightest and most in-sync rhythm section around (followed closely by Hamid Drake and anyone else), and have built a floor for the roar of such powerful front men as Fred Anderson, Kidd Jordan, Peter Brötzmann, Jemeel Moondoc and Roy Campbell, not to mention being the backbone of Parker's own recent groups.

Part of the excitement the duo generates stems from Drake being an anomaly in the current free jazz: a strong, sympathetic drummer who more often than not stays within the rhythm. At this year's Vision Festival, he managed to turn the Anderson/Jordan quartet into a dance band. Earlier this year, AUM Fidelity even issued a dance remix disc of the Parker/Drake duo Piecing the Veil.

The duo is hardly under documented, however, so the interest in this release from the Swedish label Ayler is in alto player Anders Gahnold.

In three lengthy improvisations, Gahnold (previously unknown to me but who, according to the album notes, once had a trio with South African bass legend Johnny Dyani) holds his own, often keeping in the pocket but capably pushing the edges of the groove.
His alto soars, not in scream like the labels namesake, but in song, making him one of the closer fits in the list of horn players to work within the Parker/Drake avant groove.

The success of a rhythm section, at least in part, is based on how they ignite the proceedings, and the fire of this session is immediately apparent. William may have danced, but Anders no doubt smiled.

https://www.capitalbop.com/interview-william-parker-melody-as-magic/

Interview | William Parker: ‘Melody as magic’

by CapitalBop

December 1, 2011

by Luke Stewart
Editorial board

William Parker is the most iconic bassist of New York City’s downtown scene, and one of today’s most important jazz musicians.

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s and ’60s, he was exposed to the city’s rich jazz culture first-hand through studies with an array of notable bassists, from Jimmy Garrison to Milt Hinton to Wilbur Ware. In the 1970s he became the regular bassist in Cecil Taylor’s group, gaining entrée to the thriving experimental scene. In the 1980s, he formed the formidable collective group Other Dimensions in Music, which included notable members of New York’s avant-garde scene, such as Matthew Shipp, Roy Campbell Jr. and Daniel Carter. He also co-founded and continues to organize the Vision Festival, one of the premier showcases of improvised music in the world.

In 2010, Parker made a very special recording with an organ quartet in dedication to his uncle, Joseph Edwards. Entitled Uncle Joe’s Spirit House, the project marked a new type of exploration for the bassist. The drummer on the album is Gerald Cleaver, who is known as one of the most versatile musicians on the New York scene. In Parker’s words, Cleaver can play “any style, any kind of rhythm or nuance in the music, and still have a very original concept.” The saxophonist is Darryl Foster, a veteran in R&B, having performed with Sam and Dave, among others. He was also with Parker for the bassist’s “Inside Sounds of Curtis Mayfield” project. On organ is Cooper-Moore, widely renowned as a leader on jazz’s avant-garde as well as a skilled builder of unique instruments.

At Bohemian Caverns on Sunday, Parker will hold the organ quartet’s world premiere, performing live with the group for the first time. In anticipation of that show, Parker took some time to discuss his life and music with CapitalBop. This interview was previously broadcast Wednesday evening on WPFW.

CapitalBop: How did you apply the structure of the “organ quartet” to your own musical concept?

William Parker: I became aware of the idea of an organ quartet listening to Gene Ammons and Jack McDuff, and listening to Jimmy Smith and his trios. It was a sound I heard when I was a kid. My father was very much into Jug [Ammons]. Then later on, I heard a different kind of organ with Larry Young and Sun Ra. It has always been the idea of club music – where you have a backbeat, a jumping groove, interlaced with a romantic ballad. But that is kind of a template for what it could be. We didn’t really follow a template with this. We just got the idea of what it could sound like. Obviously when you assemble a group, you have a template for what it could be, but you have to find your own place in the painting. If something already happened in history, then you say, “What can we do?” You really don’t know until you do it and put it together. We’re trying to get the music to find its own level in the history as it is unfolding now.

I didn’t really have a sound I was looking for, except that I knew we wanted a groove, we wanted something that has melody, something that has chants or songs that can be repeated, hymns, something that people can go home humming. Also, [we wanted] many unknown factors where we wouldn’t limit the range of how far we can go. It’s very important to stay open to crossing barriers with the mesh of the organ sound.

We didn’t really use a classic Hammond organ. We used a keyboard and a module that had an organ sound. We were supposed to record with a Hammond organ, but the studio we were at that particular day could not find the chords for the Hammond organ, so we used a keyboard. It is a modulated sound similar to the space organ sound that Sun Ra might have gotten from his organ.

CB: Is this one of Cooper-Moore’s inventions?

WP: Yeah. He worked on getting the organ sound he liked. He used to play Hammond organ when he went down to Virginia … where he is from. He had to do some organ work to support his family when he was down there. So [in this group] he is playing what he remembered from that experience, and his interpretation of that sound to what he needs to do on his keyboard. So he has a module and samples to play out of two different amplifiers to create the sound.

CB: What is the significance of the name Spirit House? Were you or your Uncle influenced by the church?

WP: There are images. I was familiar with the church as a child, I was taken there by my mother and attended certain events. I cannot say that I was raised up in it, but I was there. And we were familiar with the feeling of the church organ, the hymn, the way people dressed and handled themselves. Familiar with after church, the supper; familiar with the South. That was one layer of the reflection. The other layer of the reflection was Joseph Edwards, my uncle who was married to my mother’s sister, Carrie Lee Edwards. [My uncle] was a postal worker and raised four children with his wife. He [went to church], but that’s not who he was. He was always thinking about progressive things. He loved music. At one point he was a boxer. And he is still alive today. He’s 93 years old, still living in the Bronx, still thinking on his feet. So the whole concept of the record was sort of a tribute to him and his wife and the family having lived this long and survived in America.

“Music is like people. It is a living thing and has a living personality. So I am not really prejudiced to any particular kind of music.”

The thing about the Black Church [is] it’s not just one thing. It’s the church [itself], it’s the farm and field workers, it’s the people who migrated up to New York, it’s the Civil Rights Movement, it’s going through trials and tribulations with your family, it’s your children asking for things you can’t give them, it’s going through struggle and trying to move from one place to another. All these things are experiences that are in the music. The other thing about the music is that if you say “Black Music” you are talking about everything from field hollers to space music. Its in that range that the music has existed. So you have all that to draw upon plus whatever variation of these things you yourself have been working on.

If you say I want to make this sound like so-and-so, like “Jimmy Smith”, and then you try to do it, you can’t do it like Jimmy Smith, so you automatically have a mutation of that sound that is more original to you because you couldn’t do it like Jimmy Smith. But Jimmy Smith gave you the possibility that “a sound” could be made and it could work on that particular instrument, and it could be with any instrument. That’s one of the ways we find our sound by starting off using a template of another sound and then realizing that “we just can’t do that.” There are people who imitate that sound, but they don’t ever really find their own sound because they end up sounding more like the person they are trying to imitate than themselves.

CB: Would you categorize your own musical conception as an exemplification of “Black Music”? Is that an overt theme in your music?

WP: I’ve never left anything out in the sense that when I used to go over to Europe and improvise with European improvisers like Derek Bailey, I noticed that … when they reach the idea of melody or rhythm, they alter it. They don’t use a continuous rhythm. They break up the rhythm. They break up the melody, so they have a new concept of melody. Melody is there, rhythm is there, harmony is there, all the elements are there. But they are broken up in a different way because that’s how they were hearing. So I take that concept of being able to break up melodies, break up rhythms, but I also accept melody as a magical thing. This is what Albert Ayler and Don Cherry taught me, that melody is a very important part of the healing process. A happy melody is something that you could go off singing. If you heard a melody you like, when you are feeling in a particular way and you want to alter your mood, you can hum a melody. That’s why melody is important: because it is something you can reuse and put into your life at another point. Also rhythm or any aspect of music.

All I do is look at the whole history of music, and not be afraid to use it as I liked, because it always comes out differently than it had done previously. It always works out that you hear something and say, “I like that and I’m gonna use it as a basis for something,” but when you do it, if you’re lucky enough, it will always come out differently – which is actually a gift. You hear Charlie Parker and you use it as a jump-off point to possibilities. You play this way, run over these scales, play those licks, run over these harmonies, but don’t end up sounding anything like Charlie Parker. I remember talking to a saxophonist from Chicago, Fred Anderson, who really loved Charlie Parker, [he] would listen to him everyday. But when you listen to Fred, he doesn’t sound anything like Charlie Parker, although Charlie Parker was a great inspiration to him.

CB: This is similar to the way you incorporate your influences into your own music.

WP: That was the wonderful thing about not being boxed in to playing one type of music. At one point I was playing with the drummer Sunny Murray, then I would play with Rashied Ali and the singer Maxine Sullivan all at the same time. Then I was the house bassist at a club in the Bronx called the Salt and Pepper, where I played bebop. I worked with a guy named Louis McMillan, who is a ventriloquist, and we had a comedy act with a dummy. I was doing all this at the same time. If you followed me during these days, you’d see I was working with poets, with dancers. It just opened me up to realize that it wasn’t so much about the style, it was about the sound, tone. Equal music. It wasn’t about “now I’m going to play bebop, now I’m going to play swing, now I’m going to play Latin, now I’m going to play ‘free’ or some other name for that music.” That really helped me.

Then when I met the European improvisers, Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald. They were doing something different. So I was able to go into that world without blinking an eye. Then you come back and you aren’t prejudiced to any kind of music. Then when you are tired and you want to listen to Marvin Gaye, some soul, you can listen to John Cage, you can listen to anything you want to listen to and its fine. But if you put it a box in and say, “Well, bebop is the only music that is valid, if you don’t play bebop I can’t use it,” it’s like saying, “People from Texas are the only people that are valid, if you aren’t from Texas I don’t want anything to do with it.” Because music is like people. It is a living thing and has a living personality. So I am not really prejudiced to any particular kind of music.

Now, as I tell my students, we come out of musical clans. Like the Hopi Indians, they have clans. We as musicians come out of clans too. There are certain musicians who love melody. Johnny Hodges was always connected to the melody, so he was coming out of the melodic family. There are other people who love to play rhythm all the time. They like to play a certain way on the drums. There are people who play fast, there are people play slow. That’s fine, because that’s a preference. But it doesn’t have anything to do with what style you are playing in, just how you play your instrument. There are all kinds of possibilities – and this is wonderful because it doesn’t leave anybody out. No matter what kind of personality you have or your likes in music, there’s always a place for you to be comfortable playing something and finding your voice and sound.

—

William Parker’s Organ Quartet performs at Bohemian Caverns this Sunday, Dec. 4, as part of Transparent Productions’ Sundays at 7 at the Caverns series. Tickets are $20 in advance and $20 at the door, and there is no minimum. More information is available here, and tickets can be purchased here.

https://jazztrail.net/interviews/william-parker-interview-nyc

William Parker Interview, NYC

by Filipe Freitas

February 18, 2020

Jazz Trail

William Parker, 2019

Name: William Parker
Instrument: bass
Style: free jazz, avant-garde jazz
Album Highlights: O’Neals Porch (AUM Fidelity, 2000), Sound Unity (AUM Fidelity, 2005), Double Sunrise Over Neptune (AUM Fidelity, 2008)

When did you decide to become a professional musician and what led you to that decision?
I was introduced to the music of Duke Ellington when I was seven years old through my father, who played the recording Ellington Live at Newport 1956. There was a track, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” that was a favorite, the one where the tenor player Paul Gonsalves played chorus after chorus taking the music to a holy ghost feeling, like in the black church. Great music every night played in the house and every day and all day on Saturday - Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Willis Gator Tails Jackson, Don Byas, Gene Ammons. All of this music led me to the music of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Yusef Lateef, and just about everybody who was making music in the 50s and 60s. When I was about 9 years old, my father got me a trumpet and sent me for lessons. Later, I switched to trombone and cello. But through listening to bass players like Percy Heath, Jimmy Garrison, Charlie Haden, John Lamb and David Izenzon, I decided that the bass was for me. That coincided with me realizing the purpose of music was to heal people. When I was 17, I jumped into the arena and attempted to see if I could make a contribution to the world of music.

Your big band project Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield will be presented on March 4th at The Town Hall. What can people expect from this multimedia presentation?
I will present new arrangements and a new original piece. This is a different time and setting, and the work is even more relevant. This will be the first performance of the project since Amiri Bararka passed away in 2012. I have added three backup singers as well as Leena Conquest, plus a larger horn section. I have invited the poet Thomas Sayers Ellis to read some of Amiri’s text plus asked him to add his own words on the material. There will also be new interludes and extensions to the songs.

In addition to be a distinguished bassist/composer, you’re also a poet. In your opinion, which of these artistic forms more easily convey the ideas you want to express?
All forms of creativity are equal and they complement each other. It is the poetry in music that makes it work and the music inside poetry that makes it work. Music is not just sound, it is anything that is beautiful.

Your career spans 50 years. What are the aspects from the current free jazz scene that most upset you when compared to the old times? And what are the ones that you think are positive?
Music is Music. Many of the great progenitors from the 1960s are gone and the fire of the civil rights movement has burnt out so that today the kind of cathartic music and the aesthetic is different. But music is strong and it keeps revealing itself in new ways. So there are others who are coming or will come to be music, because the world needs music. But the situation around our lives are also making things harder. Musicians are spread out across the city, so gathering is much more of a conscious effort. The cost of living keeps going up and the pay for artists doesn’t come close to what is needed to survive.

Can you name two persons who influenced you the most as a musician?

Cecil Taylor, Milford Graves, Ornette Coleman, but there are many people who have inspired me.

Can you name two persons whom you’ve never collaborated with but you would like to?
There is no one I can think of. Maybe the Mexican singer Lila Downs.

Besides being a prolific bandleader you have always been an in-demand sideman. How do you manage your time? Did you ever decline to participate in a recording project that you were interested due to lack of time?

Right now I do the things that I am most interested in. Things known and many things unknown.

Can you tell me 3 jazz records that completely blew your mind?
Clark Terry - Electric Mumbles; Don Byas Meets Ben Webster; Bill Dixon - Intents and Purposes. But If you ask me tomorrow I will probably say three different records.

In which projects are you working at the moment?
The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, Southern Satellites, String Quartet, Trail of Tears

In Interviews

Tags interview, nyc, william parker

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/Jazz-bassist-William-Parker-celebrates-his-65th-birthday-at-the-Painted-Bride.html

Jazz bassist William Parker celebrates his 65th birthday at the Painted Bride

by Shaun Brady

January 16, 2017

Philadelphia Inquirer

When William Parker picks up his bass at the Painted Bride on Saturday, it will ostensibly be a celebration of his 65th birthday. For Parker, though, the show is just one more opportunity to reunite with old friends and collaborators and create jazz music in the moment, just as he has on countless occasions throughout a career that's lasted more than four decades. It's also a chance, he realizes, to introduce himself to new listeners who may not be aware of his long list of notable, if often under-the-radar, accomplishments.

"The profile of this music is very low, so there are constantly people just finding out about the music for the first time," Parker says. "No matter how old you are, since you're deep in the weeds here, you can always be discovered for the first time when you're 60 or 65 or 70."

For those in need of an introduction: The Bronx-born Parker made his entrance into New York's avant-garde jazz scene at the dawn of the "loft jazz" era in 1971, when the music's most forward-leaning artists were playing in makeshift places in industrial loft spaces in SoHo. He spent most of the 1980s as a member of legendary pianist Cecil Taylor's band, and later was a member of the David S. Ware Quartet, one of the most notable ensembles of the 1990s. He's also played a key role in the experimental jazz and arts Vision Festival, founded by his wife, dancer/choreographer Patricia Nicholson, which will celebrate its 22nd anniversary this year.

Along with being a tireless player and improviser, Parker is a prolific composer, as evidenced by the volume of material he's released in just the last five years–a three-CD set of music for large ensembles, eight CDs of his "Wood Flute Songs," six discs' worth of unreleased early recordings, and a number of single-album releases.

"We have a very long history," Zankel says. "I've had the good fortune to be a part of his evolution as an artist, a bass player, a composer, and a human being. He's more than just a bass player. He's an artist; he's a magician. He's like a medicine man, and he's developed a way of playing that's totally personal and grounded in the history of the instrument."

The sextet will also feature pianist Dave Burrell, another loft-scene veteran whose 75th birthday Parker helped celebrate in a similar concert at the Bride in 2015; trombonist Steve Swell, a free-jazz veteran with whom Parker has played in a number of contexts; drummer Muhammad Ali, a longtime collaborator along with his late brother Rashied Ali, another key figure of the loft era; and violinist Diane Monroe, who first worked with Parker in 2014 during the world premiere of the bassist's suite "Flower in a Stained Glass Window," dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

For 2017, he already has two releases in the pipeline: a duo album with the late Italian bassist Stefano Scodanibbio, recorded in 2008, and a two-CD set featuring two different quartets.

Saturday's performance will be something entirely different, a Phillycentric sextet organized by saxophonist and bandleader Bobby Zankel, who has known Parker since 1973 and who shared the stage with him at Carnegie Hall in 1974 as part of a Cecil Taylor-led ensemble.

"When you have a rapport with a person, you want to repeat it," Parker says. "It's like having a good meal and wanting to go to that restaurant again, visiting an aunt or uncle where you talk about things that stimulate you every time you see them. It's the same in playing music. It's always great to come together because there's the anticipation that something great is going to happen and the mystery of what it will be."

At an age when many are settling into retirement, Parker will entertain no thought of slowing down. His voice still betrays the excitement of each new musical experience.

"Every time you play, it's like being the pilot of a plane," he says."The audience are like your passengers. You have to take off and land safely, but you're taking them on this journey. Each concert that you play is a celebration. If it happens to be dedicated to your birthday, then it's that, but it's a real celebration and an honor and a privilege when you're able to play music together."

WILLIAM PARKER SEXTET. 8 p.m. Saturday Jan. 21, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St. Tickets: $20-$25.

Information: paintedbride.org,

Posted: January 16, 2017 - 6:19 PM

Shaun Brady, FOR THE INQUIRER

https://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2013/04/william-parker-my-downbeat-feature-from-1998.html

William Parker, my DownBeat feature from 1998

by Howard Mandel

April 20, 2013

ArtsJournal

Howard Mandel c 1998/published by DownBeat, July 1998, under headline Beneath the Underdog (the editor’s reference to Charles Mingus’s autobiography):

There’s an anchor for New York’s downtown free jazz and improv “wild bunch”: his name is William Parker. The steadfast bassist has a huge, deep-rooted sound and concept, tied to more than 25 years of hard-won experience in the noble if often misunderstood, under-appreciated and underestimated world of the avant garde–a term he uses without pause.

“If jazz is the underdog, avant garde jazz is beneath the underdog,” says Parker, who lives in Manhattan’s East Village, just a couple of blocks from where the great bassist Charles Mingus, who coined that phrase, spent his career. Parker resembles Mingus as a driving, rhythmic soloist and provocatively challenging support player, a strong-willed composer and barnstorming bandleader (and also as a writer–he’s a published poet). But unlike the stormy Mingus, Parker is low-keyed, mild-mannered and comfortable with his life, though interested, above all else, with pressing on.

“The thing about the avant garde is: even the top people are on the bottom,” he understands without rancor. “They don’t have major contracts, so there’s no lineage of good business. If the top guy’s starving, what’s for you? To starve also, or go a different way.”

Parker’s chosen the way of the working man. His indefatigable energy and upbeat spirit infuse more than 80 albums with throbbing plucked rushes of notes and unique singing/sawing bowed passages. Since 1972 he’s collaborated with star international iconoclasts like Derek Bailey, Cecil Taylor and John Zorn as well as in underground circuits with such worthy lesser-knowns as cornetist Roy Campbell Jr., tenor saxophonist Charles Gayle, reedsman Daniel Carter and the late drummer Denis Charles. Now that Sony Jazz has signed the David S. Ware Quartet, to which Parker contributes mightily, the bassist’s profile may further rise–but credit also his recent album releases, including Sunrise In the Tone World (Aum Fidelity; two CDs of his Little Huey Creative Music Ensemble), and his dynamic second solo album,William Parker (No More Records).

Parker was, of course, everywhere in the Third Annual Vision festival, organized in part by his wife, dancer-choreographer Patricia Nicholson, at the lower east side Orenzanz Art Center for a mid-May week. He played bass for the Ware Quartet (with painist Matthew Shipp and drummer Susie Ibarra); the Untempered Ensemble; a quartet with Gayle, drummer Milford Graves and New Orleans’ saxist Kidd Jordan; his standing collaborative Other Dimensions of Music, with Campbell, Carter and drummer Rashid Bakr; the Jemeel Moondoc Quintet; drummers Assif Tsahar and Susie Ibarra with fellow bassist Peter Kowald; bassoonist Karen Borca’s Quartet/Trio, trumpeter Raphé Malik, and the Jimmy Lyons Big Band. He conducted Little Huey, too.

It’s been like this, he says, ever since he ventured to Harlem from his childhood home in the Bronx to study with Jazzmobile’s Richard Davis, Milt Hinton, Art Davis (and later, Jimmy Garrison and Wilbur Ware). “When I bought my bass, I was walking home and got a gig. If I’d gotten a flute, no one would have known.”

He’d become interested in bass in high school, absorbing his father’s Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Willis Jackson records, especially aware of bassists such as John Lamb on Ellington’s “The African Flower,” Percy Heath, Jimmy Garrison with Coltrane, Mingus and Charlie Haden. “Back when stereo was coming in, one day I bought all the Ornette Coleman records on Atlantic for 99 cents each. That’s when the fire really was lit, because I liked that music. So before I even started I knew the kind of music that I wanted to get involved with. I also knew that to do what I wanted to do. I had to get a bass, learn the bass, play the bass. I just felt a kinship to the low notes.

“From the start, I was playing with comedians, folk singers, poets. It was mostly on-the-job training. I had a very good feel; if I didn’t know something, I could get by until I did know it. It was just like now. It hasn’t really changed, except I travel more.

“There’s no big adjustment for me to play with different people,” he comments. “it’s just about responding to other peoples’ sounds. I find out how what I’m doing will fit in with what they’re doing, and enhance it.

“That’s the thing about all improvisation–knowing what to do at any particular second in the music. That’s my role in any band, minute by minute: to help navigate the music so it doesn’t have dead spots. I do that by either by playing a melody, playing rhythmically, playing harder, faster, slower, or using silence, more sound, less sound–whatever I have to use. Knowing when one music segment has faded away, or is about to, is important, too. Dead spots in the music occur when it’s trying to find its way to the next musical link, and then continue. At each link, I’m trying to keep the music afloat.”

“And all the experience is been very, very good. Because when you’re playing avant garde–say you’re playing pointillistially and you hit a note. That note has to have a foundation underneath it, so it’s not just like a drop or a point with no stem. It has to have a stem, see, but the stem is invisible.

“And that stem or that sound, you develop that by playing.

It’s a combination of things. Like the way an older guy, just by the way he plays, has a maturity of sound, a deepness, that’s not so much tone but something you can sense and feel. It also has to do with rhythm, and being sure the music isn’t dry. No matter how sparse or abstract it is, that it still has this finger-snapping, Aretha Franklin, blues/swing thing happenening underneath it. Even if you don’t hear it, you know it’s happening.

“Maybe it comes from playing a vamp with a band you don’t like all night long,” Parker speculates, “or from playing a B flat blues all night long. It may came from nothing to do with what you want to play, but when you get a chance to play what you want to play, you have a foundation, and you can hear it and make it swing, without being explicit.

“I’m always in the back,” he goes on, “trying to do something different so that every piece doesn’t sound the same, every concert doesn’t sound the same. There are lots of ways to make things different–a little turn, a little twist. Things just happen. In the middle of a set you start playing things you never played before. I’m not saying they’ve never been played before, but things just get different. There are so many ways of approaching the instrument; every time you think ‘Well, I’ve about exhausted this,’ lo and behold!–there’s something else.

“You play something, and you never forget it. It may be something very simple, something you’d never think of when you’re practicing, just the way you move your hand, shift it from left to right, slightly, but get a different sound. Moving your bow so slightly, you get a different sound, and that’s like discovering a new word, a new pattern in your vocabularly.

“You keep these things, and as you play your vocabulary gets wider and wider–in fact, so wide you forget things you’ve played way in the past. But they’ll come back later. That’s the eternal thing about music: it’s always flowing, and you never know what’s going to happen. If it’s got improvisation in it or has some other way to open up, you never know where it’s going to go or what wonderous thing is behind this door you’re going to open every time you play.”

That desire to open the door, again and again, seems to define Parker and his colleagues, but he identifies another quest: the search for one’s self in sound.

“What makes a musician? That’s something people have been trying to find out,” he asserts. “What makes a Charlie Parker, a John Coltrane? You can have the records, transcribe the solos, eat what John Coltrane ate, wear John Coltrane’s suit, use the same reeds, but then you say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t sound anything like John Coltrane,’ and you realize the reason you don’t is that you’re not supposed to. It’s like a lion trying to be a bird, complaining he can’t fly. He’s not supposed to fly.

“The problem for people looking for their own sound is they’re always looking outside. Your sound is like your nose. If you look over there for your nose, you’ll never find it. It’s right there between your eyes. And those awkward little things about it that sound awful to you? That’s the embryo of your own sound.

“That’s one of the secrets, finding your own thing, and one of the secrets of how to make things happen is ‘Don’t try.’ Don’t try so hard–it just has to happen. You have to find what area of music the sound vibrates best for you. Coleman Hawkins could hit one note, make one sound, and whew!–where all these other people could hit all these other notes, and nothing magical happened. And that’s the idea: you want something magical to happen every time you play.”

To play, one needs a stage, and a significant portion of Parker’s time has found him erecting one. “The first Sound Unity festival was in ’84, and we had another big one in ’88,” he recalls. “That was musicians doing it for ourselves. But even before that, Billy Bang and I and some other people used to do a Lower East Side Music festival. We also had the Improvisers Collective fest before starting the Vision fest, in ’96. We’ve always done what we need to to survive.”

He shrugs off special status as an avant garde arts community organizer or activist, though he is one. “It’s natural, these activities,” he says, including workshops for young children and senior citizens in the sweep. “They bring the human being part and the musician part together so when you step off the bandstand you’ve got a whole creative life, not just when you play. You do things that connect with creativity, with the music, with any segment of the community; you try to inspire people in all kinds of different ways. Whether you like them or not, whether you disagree with them, you have to attempt to put your best foot forward in all your communications.

“See, music really has no parameters,” he advises. “Music is what you want it to be. If you want to put barriers on your music, that’s as far as you’re going to go, to grow. But most of the people I’ve met in the avant garde like everything. They appreciate Bird to Stravinsky to Tito Puente to folk music–they’re very open.

“I’ve learned that almost all the musics in the world do have parameters. If you play Indian classical music and go outside the parameter, it’s something else. If you play a waltz and take it somewhere else, it’s not a waltz. But so-called free music, when it’s happening, has a basis, and I can play anthing I want to play. Any time signature, rhythms from Brazil, China, Korea, or a blues, a samba–anything within this music, and it works. There are very few musics in the world where you can play, anything!” he enthuses.

But not just anything. “When I play,” Parker adds earnestly, “I’m trying to be thoughtful not only about what I’m doing, but about the whole concept.”

Parker’s got much more to say: about how to compose for big bands of ruggged, if not rag-tag, improvisers; about how the avant garde should be welcomed into jazz’s “big house”; about the necessity of musicians taking responsibility for themselves. He’s earned his knowledge in the thick of the scene; his wisdom is eminently clear and practical, evident in his actions and his art.

“I have a very large range of things I draw on,” Parker mentions, “including my early interests in painting and drawing, in playwriting, in science fiction. But I’m basically a one-five guy, that’s my root. I’m not really a ‘new music bass player’–though I play ‘new music’– not in my feeling. The thing about bass,” he rests assured, “is you’ve got to use the bottom. If not, you’re playing something else.”

WILLIAM PARKER

EQUIPMENT INFORMATION

Parker uses Tomastic Spiral Core strings, with a very high setting. “I have them high off of the fingerboard, for sound and touch purposes,” he says. “People think I’m playing very hard, but what I’m doing is getting up off the string. I apply pressure, then lift off. And because the strings are high, there’s resistance, and bounce. I get my tone from my left hand, that’s depressing, then with my right hand–no matter how it looks or how loud it sounds–it’s really about hitting the pitch and getting off of it quick. It’s a different kind of technique.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Howard Mandel is a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. IHe is president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.

His books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . .

THE MUSIC OF WILLIAM PARKER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH WILLIAM PARKER:

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, January 23, 2021

William Parker (b. January 10, 1952): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, music theorist, producer, activist, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2021

VOLUME NINE NUMBER THREE

FARUQ Z. BEY

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

William Parker

(b. January 10, 1952)

Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey

Bio

1952

1971

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986-87

1988-89

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Biography

1951

1971

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986-87

1988-89

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1998

1999

2000

Archives Jazz History According To DownBeat

William Parker: His Own ‘New Thing’