William Parker
William Parker (1952) is an American free jazz double bassist, multi-instrumentalist, poet and composer. With his wife, dancer Patricia Nicholson, Parker founded the Improvisers Collective, an organization that presented free jazz in combination with other types of spontaneous performance. Parker's style is based on a tradition of self-expression and experimentation. His arco work is possibly the most fascinating aspect of his idiom; Parker excels at the creation of dense, hyperactive streaks of color, gleaned from the inherent harmonic properties of the instrument.
William Parker (1952) is an American free jazz double bassist, multi-instrumentalist, poet and composer. With his wife, dancer Patricia Nicholson, Parker founded the Improvisers Collective, an organization that presented free jazz in combination with other types of spontaneous performance. Parker's style is based on a tradition of self-expression and experimentation. His arco work is possibly the most fascinating aspect of his idiom; Parker excels at the creation of dense, hyperactive streaks of color, gleaned from the inherent harmonic properties of the instrument.
No Coming, No Going. The Music of Peter Kuhn 1978-1979
Live broadcast recording on December 19, 1978, at Columbia University Radio WKCR-FM, NYC. Originally issued on LP, edited and in slightly different order, as Livin’ Right on Kuhn’s Big City Records (LPK 225).
Free-jazz woodwind specialist Peter Kuhn’s road to San Diego has been long and harrowing. Born in the San Fernando Valley and raised in L.A., Kuhn’s career flourished in the Bay Area and eventually led him to New York at the invitation of Anthony Braxton in the mid-’70s, where he played wit…
Live At Jazzwerkstatt Peitz
This performance from May 2014 was the opening concert at Jazzwerkstatt 51, given by Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone, piano), William Parker (double bass) and Hamid Drake (drums) in the Stüler Church, Peitz, Germany. The concert was dedicated “In Memoriam Peter Kowald”, the German bassist who died in 2002 and lived in New York for almost the last two decades of his life. Gayle and Parker were among his earliest musical associates in the city, as seen in the film Rising Tones Cross (full of now fa…
Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind
"Stan's Hat Flapping In The Wind features work from one of the jazz avant-garde's most heralded figures, presented in one of the most traditional of forms. 19 new songs composed by William Parker, and performed by singer Lisa Sokolov & pianist Cooper-Moore. Parker is -- among his many great talents -- a master of evocative song-craft, as readily evidenced on Corn Meal Dance (AUM043, 2007), and the very recently released Great Spirit (AUM098, 2015), by his Raining On The Moon ensemble. The compos…
Die Like a Dog
German reedman-composer Peter Brotzmann is, despite an immense catalog spanning over forty years of activity in free music, criminally underrepresented in the format of a "standard" piano-less quartet. From reed-heavy octets and orchestras to the winds-bass-drums power trio, not to mention a long-running trio with percussion and piano, most of the possible formations have been covered. His Die Like A Dog Quartet was the one entry in this instrumental canon in the late 1990s, and produced five re…
For Those Who Are, Still
An astonishing 3CD box set of new and previously unissued long-form works from world-renowned composer-bassist William Parker. This box set is comprised of four distinctly compelling long-form works -- Parker's first composition written for symphony orchestra performance; a commissioned piece for a standing new music ensemble; a 'chamber-jazz' song series for voice / soprano sax / piano / bass; a composition created specifically for a particularly diverse Parker assemblage in Universal To…
Great Spirit
"Great Spirit again makes abundantly clear William Parker's multi-faceted talents as bassist, composer, poet, bandleader and =songwriter=. Raining On The Moon is the extraordinary group which seamlessly fuses all of these prodigious gifts: his long-standing Quartet with Hamid Drake, Rob Brown, Lewis Barnes is here exquisitely augmented by singer Leena Conquest breathing further compassion & dignity into William's lyrics, and pianist Eri Yamamoto for expert chordal support. Going back a few years…
Medicine Buddha
\\\"Billy Bang was a brilliant human being, always much more than himself, especially when he surrendered to his true calling-that of musician, one who transforms music into magic, dancing instead of walking, jumping instead standing still. Billy Bang was an American original, an original musician, an organic person who had tapped into the river of sound and was riding on a boat drenched in blues-soul-funk and space.Billy is gone and unfortunately for the world there will never ever be another p…
Live at NHKM
Outstanding!! A confirmation of their ascension to the highest level of improvising ensembles, Konstrukt recently shared the stage with such names as Evan Parker, Marshall Allen, Joe McPhee and Peter Brotzmann showing their great ability to adjust their instantly composed music to the presence of a guest.
And we can only say that this latest collaboration with the legendary American double bassist William Parker is another evidence of their prowess. The live recording of their show at NazÄ…
Wood Flute Songs: Anthology/Live 2006-2012
Some of the most amazing work we've ever heard from this legendary bassist – a set that's not based around music from a wooden flute, but which instead refers to the instrument in its title – as an illustration of the very organic approach of the work within! A 8CD box set of all previously unissued recordings by world-renowned bassist-composer-bandleader William Parker, a 2013 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation's Artist Award. Parker is a wonderfully prolific composer, and over half of t…
Navajo sunrise
Daniel Carter's relaxed phrasing moves naturally between Parker's earthly bass sound and Ughi's sensitive drumming. This trio's music seems to be possessed by a light and welcoming spirit. A constant flux of energy, a three way dialogue consumed within the time and space of one breath. Telling the story of the trio's origins, the musicians talk about dreams and desires while the body of this music takes shape within the human connection of the band's relationship which has grown over time, throu…
Tender Exploration
“Tender Exploration” reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”, it’s an enormous metallic machine on spindly legs, walking like a toddler, but also steaming, mumbling, panting, a creature full of energy, and inhabited by a fire demon. “Drake”, the first track”, starts seeking for a structure almost clumsily, the band members seem to have to find each other. But soon they have a good chemistry and Bauer, who dominates this piece in spite of its name, adds his huge repertoire of tech…
Touchin' On Trane
"This is Charles Gayle's most accessible work. Gayle's mastery of free jazz is blended with a more traditional compositional style of jazz on this disc. Touchin' on Trane is composed of five original songs, and even includes ex-Coltrane drummer Rashied Ali. As the title insists, Coltrane is the influence for the music on this disc. The influence ranges from the upbeat tempo of "Giant Steps" in "Part A," while "Part D" is reminiscent of Coltrane's "Live in Japan" performances. Gayle, bassi…
Melodic Art-Tet
**CD edition** 1974 recordings at WKCR in NYC from the quintet of Charles Brackeen (flute & sax), Ahmed Abdullah (trumpet), William Parker (bass), Roger Blank (drums) and Tony Waters (percussion), beautifully recorded and essential free improvisation. "The dominant influences at this time were John Coltrane and Albert Ayler (both of whom had passed away relatively recently); and Ornette Coleman (who had not yet gone Harmolodic). Although some musicians had sought to push the Fire Music of late C…
Altitude
Altitude is one of two live recordings to be released in July 2012 as part of the celebration of AUM Fidelity’s 15th anniversary. It documents the first-ever performance by esteemed veteran improvisers Joe Morris, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver as a trio during label founder Steven Joerg’s two-week run curating The Stone in New York during June 2011.
Collectively, Morris, Parker and Cleaver have appeared on hundreds of recordings, including a variety of prominent releases on AUM Fidelity, but…
Centering
Milestone! The music on these six discs comes from roughly the first decade of William Parker's career, one of the most intensely creative periods enjoyed by any musician of any era. William Parker's Centering (No Business CD 42-47), as the subtitle makes clear, is composed entirely of Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987. It's six CDs in all, with booklet and attractive slipcase.What makes all that important? It's William Parker the superb bassist, jazz composer and bandleader at his very bes…
Crumbling in the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake
A triple CD limited box set of 3 CDs and a 48 page booklet, introducting 2 new studio CDs of solo bass, and a reissue of William Parker's out of print 1995 solo bass album "Testimony". A strictly limited/one-time only edition of 1000 copies (987 to be exact) specially designed box set containing 3 albums of William Parker solo bass compositions/performances in full tandem with a 48-page booklet of all-new William Parker writings (poems, dreams, meditations and more). Very powerful and prof…
Black Man's Blues
Recorded 29th May 1977 at A Day in Solidarity with Soweto: A Fund Raiser, Harlem Fight-Back, 1 East 125th St., New York Violinist Billy Bang made his recording debut as a leader with the Survival Ensemble, the first working band he ever led, on New York Collage in 1979. Bang, saxophonists Bilal Abdur Rahman and Henry Warner, bassist William Parker, and percussionists Rashid Bakr and Khuwana John Fuller played incendiary free jazz more clearly indebted to the New York avant-garde of the precedin…
Conversations
William Parker has long taken an active role in the presentation of his own art (self-produced records/CDs, concerts, festivals, publications) and that of others. That initiative continues with this major work, an anthology of musician-to-musician interviews in the lineage of Arthur Taylor’s seminal “Notes and Tones”. Approximately 12 years in the making, “Conversations” has hallmarks of being a very personal project, spotlighting many musicians who are largely unknown to even avid fans of the…
I Plan To Stay A Believer
The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield. "Bassist/composer William Parker is among the most active and highly regarded musicians performing today. The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield is the first project in his 35-year career devoted to the music of another composer; here Parker interpolates the mighty Mayfield songbook with an equally mighty 8-piece band. Curtis Mayfield was a prophet, a preacher, a revolutionary, a humanist, and a griot. Words that all apply to William Parker himself. I Plan To S…
Double Sunrise Over Neptune
The third and final installment of AUM Fidelity's collaborative releases with Arts For Art, Inc. presenting specially commissioned works which made their debut at Vision Festival XII in June 2007. And it is William Parker's this time me a tell you IAIAH. An orchestral work featuring immensely gifted individual and collective voices from around the world, meshing as one to manifest a pair of deep bass groove-driven mantras. Featuring both Hamid Drake and Gerald Cleaver on drums (each tremendous m…