Evan Parker & Motoharu Yoshizawa​:​ Two Chaps (December 2021 Chap Chap Records)

Evan Parker & Motoharu Yoshizawa live at cafe Amores 1996

1. Two Chaps 1 19:26

2. Two Chaps 2 12:11

3. Evan Parker - One Chap 17:09

4. Two Chaps 3 11:10

5. Two Chaps 4 06:41

PRE ORDER

Evan Parker - Winns Win (October 1, 2021 Byrd Out)

Free Jazz pioneer, Evan Parker returns to Walthamstow to record an album taking inspiration from the renowned designer and activist, William Morris at the home of the socialist campaigner, which now houses the William Morris Gallery.

The original working title for the album was 'Barbarism Once More', taken from a longer quotation from Morris, which reflects the passion, spontaneity and iconoclastic nature of Evan's playing. However, in light of the death of Evan’s friend and leading light of the improvising scene, John Russell, who lived on Winns Avenue, adjacent to the Gallery, Evan decided to offer a tribute to John, calling the album ‘Winns Win’.

Evan has spoken about entering "a utopian space" when he plays, to which a parallel can be drawn to Morris's novel 'News from Nowhere', and from there to Free Improvisation's early political leanings. The album presents nine spontaneous compositions that are very dense, though very melodical at the same time, using pattern and repetition as Morris did in his designs. This is music for headphones, or high-quality speakers - you’re in the room, hearing the movement of the saxophone keys and the breathing close at hand, with the sax in the middle of the room and panning providing a three-dimensional experience.

The album will be released on 1 October to coincide with the 125th anniversary of Morris's Death (3 October).

‘WW5’ will be released as a trailing single on 8 September. The track has the air of an expansion of what could have been a short beginning of a longer improvisation.

The original artwork is ‘Design for Flowerpot embroidery’ (designed c.1876) by William Morris, with additional design by Oliver Bancroft. The Gallery notes “Morris based the design on two Italian seventeenth-century lacis-work panels acquired by the South Kensington Museum in 1875. Lacis is a handmade net onto which a design is darned.” Thanks to William Morris Gallery and Waltham Forest Council for their support in producing the record. 

1. WW1

2. WW2

3. WW3

4. WW4

5. WW5

6. WW6

7. WW7

8. WW8

9. WW9

All tracks created and performed by Evan Parker.

Original design work by William Morris, additional design by Oliver Bancroft.

Sound Engineers, Dotan Cohen and Harry Loughlin. Mixing and mastering by Dotan Cohen.

PREORDER

Natural Information Society with Evan Parker - descension (Out of Our Constrictions) April 2021 eremite records

Breath & pulse, an unforgettable strategy for transferring energy between musicians feels more directly related to endurance than typical designations of music. The possibility of a never-ending breath allows for the weaving of complex explorations of tonal possibility between harmonium, guimbri, drum, & horn that leads to non-conventional strategies of harmony & unity. 

The rhythmic engine further develops the pulse, shifting the sounds from recognizable forms to other worlds of sound development & masterful play. Natural Information Society balances knowledge of historical musics with the possibility of new futures, combing many exploratory cultural idioms that help us remember the heart & low sound and hum through meditative, spiritual new music.

Music has the potential to embed us in a state of unlimited possibility that leads to another kind of emotional & spiritual territory. It is this meditative possibility that leads to trans-potentials. The music constantly allows us to shift if we stay with it long enough. Descension (Out of Our Constrictions), a 75-minute composition spanning four stations on a double-sided LP, allows us to experience that build-up. In July of 2019, I had an opportunity to play with Natural Information Society in Berlin at Arkaoda & experience the build-up first-hand. I remember feeling very happy to be away from the political complexities of the United States but still close to the culture that made me.

I came to hear the ensemble as a listener & believer in the music and Joshua asked me to sit in with the group. Given the times, I chose to riff on, “My Country Tis of Thee.” Descension began & for the first 45 minutes, it unfolded. People danced & cheered & really listened. The groove was set & the intentional house/trance/drone was so evocative & in many ways, a polyphony of Chicago sounds. Abrams nodded & I joined. The ongoing rhythmic intent made it easy for me to choose a phrase & stay with it. I remember chanting over & over, sweet land of liberty, sweet land of liberty. 

Then, from every mountainside…. from every mountainside…..toward the end of the 40 minutes of so, I was exhausted from wailing… from breathing & shouting, let freedom ring. By the time it was over, I was on the floor & the energy made a shift from a state of trance-like intention to, what felt like a rock concert. We were all the way in. I opened my eyes & the band was still holding it down, with more intensity, but still in the zone, locked. It was like freedom was being nestled between pulse & breath & I was exhausted from wanting it & wanting to participate, in a freedom song or a free state.

Breathing in the wake of George Floyd’s death then takes on a new dysfunction – a new tonal idiom. To be choked or to be unbalanced, for a note to be held back or a sound to be silenced, no longer feel like jazz devices, but rather, a reaction to the complexities that occur on our streets & in our cities. There are shouts, but they are not wailings, there are utterances, yet they are not full speech. It is this truth that links Descension (Out of Our Constrictions) as a sign of the times.

Natural Information Society forces us to imagine the myriad of voices that have fallen on our streets and hear cries & shrieks in the music as a way to understand the immeasurable & often unmediated circumstance of violence that is our new truth. & yet, within the unsettling horror of this day, there is a mantric pull that refuses to cease. An impulse toward redemption. -- Theaster Gates

1. descension (Out of Our Constrictions) I 17:31

2. descension (Out of Our Constrictions) II 19:35

3. descension (Out of Our Constrictions) III 17:26

4. descension (Out of Our Constrictions) IV 20:11

Joshua Abrams: guimbri

Lisa Alvarado: harmonium & effects

Mikel Patrick Avery: drums

Evan Parker: soprano saxophone

Jason Stein: bass clarinet

recorded: London, Cafe OTO, 2019-07-09

producers: Abrams & Michael Ehlers

engineer: James Dunn

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Evan Parker's Electroacoustic Ensemble with Sainkho Namtchylak - Fixing the Fluctuating Ideas (Victo Records 2021)

The FIMAV performance is an extraordinary recording, an aural opportunity to hear the Ensemble exploring at length, stretching the contemporaneous studio documentation, but even with the Ensemble’s brilliant and transformative history, Sainkho Namtchylak’s spontaneous addition to Fixing is unique. Namtchylak’s intensity transcends the metaphoric. This performance is not folkloric. It is folklore. It is not shamanic. It is shamanism.

The ElectroAcoustic Ensemble is one of the most significant events in the humanization of electronic music, in making it mobile and spontaneously responsive. Fluctuating, by the Ensemble itself, is more than a valuable document, it’s a major revelatory work. Stuart Broomer

1. Fixing 39'40"

2. Fluctuating 32'33"

Sainkho Namtchylak - voice

Barry Guy - bass

Paul Lytton - percussion, electronics

Philipp Wachsmann - violon, alto saxophone, electronics

Marco Vecchi - diffusion sonore, live electronics

Walter Prati - live electronics

Evan Parker - soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone

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Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble / Warszawa 2019 (April 2021 Fundacja Słuchaj)

From the opening strike of metallic percussion, the oscillator-like wave of soprano saxophone, the burble of electronics, a resonant piano bass string, the shimmering decay of a gong and the broad-toned brilliance of the trumpeter’s brief melody-then-feint-to-intermittent-oscillation, we are in the special ‒ spectral and material ‒ world of Evan Parker’s ElectroAcoustic Ensemble (EAE), a band over 50 years in the making, its official existence 30 years. It is, in an era-defining way, both a great moment in the history of late-20th century music and the early-21st century’s, a unique response to the notion of large-scale free improvisation that, rather than the cultish practice of a disaffected elite, is a signifying laboratory for human interaction, social, meditative, meaning-defining and edge-blurring, a forward probe in the necessity for calm that sees atheists going on pilgrimage, the tone-deaf joining choirs and an explosion in sales of fashions for fitness in which to sit around and drink coffee, no qualitative judgement here, all perhaps equally beneficial. It is a moment of collective definition, an episode of a group mind in which shared concentration gives meaning and form to shared time and space, the period of its making and its later listening.

This listening, I’m 19 minutes in, to a piece I’ve listened to perhaps 20 times, and I’m in a space I can’t recall hearing before, a space where a room’s locating echoes are sufficiently vast to suggest the distance between planets or solar systems, national economies or, for the cognoscenti, the musical instruments and appurtenances floating as a space station in a brown cosmos in Richard Jenning’s (aka “Prophet”) painting on the original 1961 release of Eric Dolphy’s Out There. There is nothing undemanding, jejune, simplistic, coddling, easy about this music. It asks just enough to challenge, and when you’ve met that reward, it asks just enough to challenge again, leading you into a world of increasing grandeur, intensity and, strangely, intimacy, like being alone in a room with Guernica, Des canyons aux étoiles or the Grand Canyon itself.

The EAE is one of the great bands of improvised music with a prehistory of over twenty years before it formed in 1992, and with a history of nearly thirty years since. In its later forms, it’s a big band; in its beginnings, a duo. Reflecting on this latest form, Parker remarks that only he and Paul Lytton are left from the original. That references the 1990s sextet of Toward the Margins (ECM) but it could suggest the 1969 Parker-Lytton duo, whose performances sometimes added previous performance tapes.

A notion of the double is essential. If there’s a clear parallel for the EAE, it’s Ornette Coleman’s Double Quartet of Free Jazz (1960), in which Coleman paired each member of his then-current quartet with a musician playing the same instrument. To create the EAE, Parker matched an electronic musician, each processing an individual signal, to the members of his trio with Lytton and bassist Barry Guy.

Each successive episode balanced the physical and the abstract, the acoustic and the electronic. Eventually, it would assume a global element. By 2010, an 18-member version appeared in a Lisbon concert. Earlier technologies were supplemented with other developments, including an Apple MacBook, as well as precursors, like a Stroh violin and an electric guitar.

Ancient instruments, a Japanese sho and a shakuhachi were also included. The original twinning reached its apotheosis in a kind of globalized, pan-temporal process of recording and reprocessing and rethinking, all in an essentially free-improvising big band in which sectional play and organization could also be perfect, live as Memorex, instruments picked up and processed in the instant.

In this latest incarnation, Parker and Lytton remain from the ensemble’s earliest days; the electronic duo of FURT, Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer, have been present since 2007’s The Moment’s Energy, while clarinetist Peter van Bergen first appeared in 2010. They’re balanced by five recent arrivals: Adam Linson, bass and electronics; Matt Wright, laptop and turntable; Percy Pursglove, trumpet; Mark Nauseef, percussion; and Sten Sandell piano and synthesiser.

Usually adding to a band means adding more of the same thing. With the EAE, Parker has expanded relationships. As well as contributing their own material, the electronic musicians pick up the precise content of the acoustic improvisers, creating facsimiles and treating that material accordingly, adding essential quantitative levels, the literally recorded, to the process. If Parker once said with a special precision, “My roots are in my record player,” so too are the processes of the EAE. Ideas of the section, of call and response ‒ many of the components of the big band ‒ were translated into a form that contained both free improvisation and that transforming and transformative electronic unison. Quite wonderfully, Barrett, Obermayer and Wright have added music made out of Evan Parker records.

The spontaneous exchange of data with repetition and transformation connects the EAE to the great tradition of the jazz big band, specifically the riff culture of the early Count Basie band, a spontaneous phrase picked up, replicated, exchanged, multiplied, to assemble a piece of music out of the interconnected syndicates of brass, reeds and rhythm. Here it’s expanded to include synthesizers and samplers as modes of digital reproduction rather than the digital reproduction from ears to fingers on keys. The special time of the Basie band: it more fully occupied time than any of its orchestrated contemporaries, by its very appreciation of spontaneous creation.

As the piece continues to unfold, it becomes increasingly about the experience of sounds in space, sounds as they’re picked up, repeated, reimagined, redistributed. Eventually, it grows increasingly sparse, its components fewer and further apart, yet the sounds themselves more resonant, the space both opening and enriched in the process. These spatial relations have temporal consequences. Priority belongs to the immediate sound as it comes to the fore, occupying attention, attention as earworld, we are both in the process and in the sound, and the reverberations in space combine with those of time to create the collective composition, a collection of instants in time mixed together in the incipient moment, this music moving us closer and closer to its present.

Eventually our specific position in this space, so immediately pressing, loses its very particularity…it is the shared uniqueness of position that becomes the collective moment for musicians and audience alike, as well as the community of sounds themselves, which have become an entity, a pattern, that is both continuous with and distinct from the experience of the group. Resonance, an echo as continuity, stretches duration.

What is happening to time here? Sometimes individuals‒Parker, Pursglove, Sandell stand out‒will at times play very rapidly, at others very slowly, seemingly independently of one another and what is going on around them, later in the music particularly, amidst the multi-spatial echoes, the resonant hang of piano, percussion, gong. As the piece seems to spread out, especially in the final third, this cumulative effect of rapid and stretched music develops its special quality, a mutation in the perception of time: the way in which a listener experiences the present has stretched; the musicians become architects and engineers of time itself. Stuart Broomer

The ElectroAcoustic Ensemble was formed in 1990 as a sextet to explore the possibilities of real-time signal processing in an improvising context. and shortly became an opus magnum ensemble in the whole of Evan Parker's musical biography. Most of the CDs documenting the development of this exciting large ensemble were released by the legendary ECM label. The last time when EAE brought us its new CD titled Hasselt was nine years ago (PSI).

Now, after this very long period, we proudly announce the brand new Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble is coming! Beautifully recorded two years ago on the Warsaw-based festival Ad Libitum by Kuba Sosulski and beautifully mixed by Fil Gomez and Evan Parker himself in the middle of 2020 at Arcobarco, Ramsgate, UK.

So let's listen and enjoying the ten pieces ensemble led by one of the greatest musicians in the world. Here comes WARSZAWA 2019

1. Warszawa 2019 part A 24:42

2. Warszawa 2019 Part B 33:58

Evan Parker - soprano

Matt Wright - laptop and turntable

Paul Lytton - percussion and analogue electronics

Richard Barrett - sampling keyboard

Paul Obermayer - sampling keyboard

Percy Pursglove - trumpet

Peter van Bergen - bass and Ab clarinets

Mark Nauseef - percussion

Sten Sandell - piano and synthesiser

Adam Linson - bass and electronics

Recorded live on 12 of October 2019 at 14th Ad Libitum Festival, Laboratorium, U-Jazdowski, Wojciech Krukowski Hall, Warsaw by Kuba Sosulski

Mixed by Evan Parker with Fil Gomes at Arcobarco, Ramsgate, UK

Mastering by Grzegorz Piwkowski (High End Audio)

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Lol Coxhill / Joe McPhee / Chris Corsano / Evan Parker - Tree Dancing (2021 Catalytic Sound)

"This recording from the earlier years of Cafe Oto documents the impossible pairing of four contemporary giants. Its one of those miraculous one off groupings that reminds us why the venue opened in the first place.'

"The magic of the first minutes - an alto solo by Joe McPhee of true purity - soft-spoken, masterful and accomplished - brought back to mind the blissful Coleman/Haden duet last year at the Royal Festival Hall. 'Ornette gave me freedom to move in a certain way,' said McPhee. He searched hesitantly and carefully for his words, all the more surprising from such an articulate musical (or, as he might say 'muse-ical') practitioner and campaigner. Coleman's 80th birthday coincided with McPhee's stint at Cafe Oto.

McPhee and his co-musicians delivered an intense performance which was both creative and restrained. With Evan Parker 's tenor in tow - a collaboration going back to the late 70s - and Lol Coxhill, sitting with head bowed intently, a soprano master - it could have gone anywhere, yet they worked off each other, often in the higher registers, building up almost bird-call like interactions and trills. Earlier, Chris Corsano's drumming presented a dense bedrock for McPhee to play against, and his solo spell was a crisp exercise in sonic curiosity.

Recorded 10th March 2010, this is also a document of the only time Lol Coxhill and Joe Mcphee shared the stage. The recording is a little rough, but hey, so was your birth!"-Otoroku 

Lol Coxhill: soprano saxophone

Joe McPhee: saxophones

Chris Corsano: drums, percussion

Evan Parker: saxophones

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Alexander Hawkins (feat. Evan Parker/Matthew Wright + Riot Ensemble) - Togetherness Music (Intakt Records 2021)

With Togetherness Music, British pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins presents a fascinating musical panorama, a distillation and synthesis of different traditions and influences, reflecting the broad spectrum of an extraordinary musical spirit. Released to celebrate Hawkins' 40th birthday, this six-movement quasi-orchestral work is an extensive expansion and revision of a piece which originated with a commission from conductor and composer Aaron Holloway-Nahum for the Riot Ensemble, to feature Hawkins and saxophone icon Evan Parker – with whom Hawkins has enjoyed a now more than decade-long musical association – as soloists. The new incarnation of the work features the original forces, augmented by additional acoustic improvisers and the electronic wizardry of Matthew Wright.

Whilst the Riot Ensemble are primarily renowned for their performan- ces of notated contemporary classical music, and Parker is one of the seminal figures in free improvisation and the post-Coltrane jazz continuum, roles shift fluidly throughout this work, creating an entirely distinctive soundworld.

"Collaborations among improvisers and classical musicians can be fraught – a clash of cultures," writes musician James Fei in the comprehensive liner notes. "When it works, however, something unique and in-between becomes possible." Indeed: Togetherness Music shows new musical possibilities. A highly contemporary musical work, which points to the future.

1. Indistinguishable From Magic 09:31

2. Sea No Shore 07:24

3. Ensemble Equals Together 06:57

4. Leaving the Classroom of a Beloved Teacher 08:31

5. Ecstatic Boababs 08:50

6. Optimism of the Will 09:33

Alexander Hawkins: Piano, Composition

Evan Parker: Soprano Saxophone

Aaron Holloway-Nahum: Conductor

Rachel Musson: Flute, Tenor Saxophone

Percy Pursglove: Trumpet

James Arben: Flute, Bass Clarinet

Neil Charles: Double Bass

Mark Sanders: Drums, Percussion

Matthew Wright: Electronics

Benedict Taylor: Viola

Hannah Marshall: Cello

Music by Alexander Hawkins (PRS). Rec July 30, 2020 at Challow Park Studios, Oxfordshire, UK by Will Biggs. Assistant engineer: James Towler. Mixed and mastered September 2020, London, UK, by Alex Bonney. Cover art and graphic design: Jonas Schoder. Linernotes: James Fei. Produced by Alexander Hawkins and Intakt Records.

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Parker. Guy. Lytton. Trio - Breaths and Heartbeats (RASTASCAN RECORDS 2018)

"To know the number of steps one has been allotted from the beginning. The number of heartbeats and breaths. The number of bites."

— Elias Canetti "The Secret Heart of the Clock" 

The music presented here was recorded in one day. We worked in three blocks of time: the first session was with saxophone, bass and drums. Nine pieces were played. The second session was for the percussion interludes, the "breathers" of the titles — here we used orchestral percussion instruments , rattles, shakers and gongs in addition to Paul's usual kit. Around twenty short pieces were recorded. In the third session we again played the usual saxophone/bass/drums music of the trio. Without being aware of the number at the time, we recorded a further nine pieces. We were playing knowing that the sequencing of the material would be done later. 

Editing, as a music studio term, often implies the cosmetic enhancement of performances by recording in short sequences and then, by careful selection and recombination, creating an apparently flawless master. This kind of editing is anathema to the spirit of improvisation and many would argue to the spirit of all music making. nevertheless, it is increasingly common for recordings of classical works to be compiled with an edit ever ten seconds. 

The editing that has been employed in this work is more akin to film editing, perhaps better termed montage, where the sequencing of takes is arrived at in a process separate from the filming but where the integrity of each take is determined in real time. There is a formal symmetry to the sequence chosen which could be represented by the schema: 1A2B3C4D5E6F7F'6E'5D'4C'3B'2A'1. 

However, since "breaths" and "heartbeats" have been pre-combined in compiling the sequence for CD, there are just 12 track numbers which limits (but does not prevent) the listener altering the overall form by programming a different running order — although to retain the intended alternation of "breaths" and "heartbeats' track 12 will always have to be last. This shaping of the final form, by decisions made after the playing is finished, is an inevitable part of recording and something which distinguishes it from pure performance. My usual approach is to present the pieces in the sequence they were played. This CD is different. 

— Evan Parker 

Evan Parker: soprano and tenor saxophones, percussion

Barry Guy: bass and piccolo bass, percussion

Paul Lytton: drums and percussion

1. Breath and Heartbeat 1 07:54

2. Breath and Heartbeat 2 07:19

3. Breath and Heartbeat 3 10:29

4. Breath and Heartbeat 4 02:19

5. Breath and Heartbeat 5 03:35

6. Breath and Heartbeat 6 04:44

7. Breath and Heartbeat 7 04:05

8. Breath and Heartbeat 8 03:30

9. Breath and Heartbeat 9 03:43

10. Breath and Heartbeat 10 03:53

11. Breath and Heartbeat 11 05:31

12. Breaths and Heartbeat 06:07

Recorded 3 December 1994 at Gateway Studios, London, England.

Engineer: Steve Lowe

Assistant engineer: Ray Matthews

Digital Mastering Dave Bernez

Production coordination: Maya Homburger

Executive producer: Gino Robair

Design: Lucija Kordic

All pieces © 1995 Parker/Guy/Lytton

Peter Brötzmann Octet – Machine Gun (Alternate Takes) TROST RECORDS 2018

First time issued on vinyl: alternate takes from the essential "Machine Gun" album on Brotzmann's BRO label in 1968, aggressive but astute music from now-legendary players Brotzmann, Evan Parker & Gerd Dudek on tenor sax (Brotzmann doubles on baritone sax), Peter Kowald on bass, Fred Van Hove on piano, Buschi Niebergall on bass, and two drummers - Han Bennink & Sven-Ake Johansson.

"Alternate versions, never before released on vinyl from Peter Brotzmann Octet's Machine Gun (1968)."-Cien Fuegos

"The Tet Offensive. The Democratic National Convention In Chicago. The MLK and RFK assasinations. And if 1968 wasn't violent enough, West German avant garde tenorman Peter Brötzmann unleashed Machine Gun unto the world.

Unhinged, utterly devoid of subtlety. In your face. Of all the entries that may follow in my Whack Jazz series, none will be as extreme an expression of free jazz as this one, John Zorn's Naked City with Yamatsuka Eye notwithstanding.

Major eruptions are followed by minor ones. Occasional rat-a-tat-tats on the drums by Han Bennink for the various takes of the title song is a simple reminder of the theme. The other saxophonists Willem Breuker and Evan Parker join PB for some impromtu faux choruses but despite everyone blowing at their hardest, Brötzmann's tenor always manages to rise above the chaos; the man has steel lungs. Pianist Fred Van Hove is barely audible most of the time and even having two bassists...Peter Kowald and Buschi Niebergall...doesn't make for a consistently strong presence on the low end, either, although where they are heard, they make the most of the opportunity. Just as the alert ear can begin to pick up some semblance of a simple melody rising from the chaos, the ensemble blows it up into total disintegration, as if to be playing an evil game of creating enemies for the pleasure of cutting them down; an influence of the then-living Albert Ayler.

Virtually all the players on this record were at the beginning of their careers and have since become some pretty significant jazz players in Europe and the world. Bennink himself will merit his own entry on this blog one day.

So while it's pretty cool to say that Peter Brötzmann is a favorite tenor player of the former Leader Of The Free World, it's even more cool to explore his music and discover how he's become such a giant in both European jazz and free jazz. Machine Gun is where the greatness begins."-S. Victor Aaron, Something Else Reviews (originally published in Whack Jazz)

Peter Brötzmann: baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone

Peter Kowald: acoustic bass

Buschi Niebergall: acoustic bass

Sven-Ake Johansson: drums

Han Bennink: drums

Fred Van Hove: piano

Evan Parker: tenor saxophone

Willem Breuker: tenor saxophone

SIDE A

1. Machine Gun (Second Take)

SIDE B

1. Responsible / For Jan Van De Ven (First Take)

Evan Parker / Eddie Prevost - Tools Of Imagination (FUNDACJA SLUCHAJ 2018)

Dave Holland - Uncharted Territories 2CD (DARE2 RECORDS May 11, 2018)

Uncharted Territories, which will be released in 2CD and 3LP formats, reunites Dave Holland with saxophonist Evan Parker, a longtime friend from their early days in London. Theyre joined by Craig Taborn, on piano and electronics, and Ches Smith on percussion. In addition to quartet improvisations, they also broke off into every possible subset of duo and trio configurations. The group also recorded two compositions by Smith and one by Holland. A resulting 23 tracks present a series of deep, multi-layered conversations between the musicians, some of whom were interacting for the first time.

DISC 1

1 Thought on earth

2 Piano - bass - percussion t1

3 Q&a

4 Tenor - bass w3

5 Qt12

6 Duo bass tenor w3

7 Qw2

8 Tenor - piano - bass t2

9 Organ - vibes w1

10 Bass - percussion t2

11 Tenor - piano - percussion t1

12 Qt13

DISC 2

1 Tenor - bass - percussion t2

2 Piano - percussion w3

3 Qt5

4 Tenor - bass w1

5 Piano - bass - percussion t2

6 Unsteady as she goes

7 Bass - percussion t1

8 Qw5

9 Tenor - bass - percussion t1

10 Tenor - bass w3

11 Qw1

Dave Holland, double bass

Evan Parker, saxophones

Craig Taborn, piano

Ches Smith, drums, percussion

Alexander von Schlippenbach / Globe Unity Orchestra - Globe Unity 50 Years (INTAKT RECORDS April 20, 2018)

The Globe Unity Orchestra is not just an ensemble of enormous historical importance to jazz but one which proves the continuing relevance of its self-imposed task.

The present line-up, encompassing musicians of several generations and nationalities, lives up to the responsibility of producing genuinely new music, rejecting the commonplace and avoiding cliché, each time they play together. As if to contradict those who accuse the Globe Unity Orchestra (and free jazz in general) of predictability, the golden jubilee at the Jazzfest Berlin was characterised by extreme contrast and high drama, both musical and visual. The audience was drawn in and engaged to a degree that became obvious when the end of Evan Parker’s short unaccompanied soprano solo, almost midway through the 45 minutes, gave them a first chance to express their approval with a roar that can be clearly heard on the recording. At that moment, and others, they seemed unmistakeably to be applauding not just individual contributions but the brilliance of the collective endeavour. (from the liner notes by Richard Williams)

Henrik Walsdorff: alto saxophone

Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky: alto saxophone, clarinet, flute

Daniele D’Agaro: tenor saxophone, clarinet

Gerd Dudek: soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute

Evan Parker: tenor saxophone

Rudi Mahall: bass clarinet

Axel Dörner: trumpet

Manfred Schoof: trumpet, flugelhorn

Jean-Luc Cappozzo: trumpet

Tomasz Stańko: trumpet

Ryan Carniaux: trumpet

Christof Thewes: trombone

Wolter Wierbos: trombone

Gerhard Gschlössl: trombone

Carl Ludwig Hübsch: tuba

Alexander von Schlippenbach: piano

Paul Lovens: drums

Paul Lytton: drums

Globe Unity Orchestra – 50 Years 44:03

Recorded at Jazzfest Berlin 2016 by RBB, November 4, 2016.

Mixed and mastered by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg. Radio producer: Ulf Drechsel.

Sound supervisor: Wolfgang Hoff. Recording engineer: Peter Schladebach. Digital cut and mastering: Uli Hieber.

Cover art and graphic design: Jonas Schoder. Photos: Kazue Yokoi. Liner notes: Richard Williams.

Produced by RBB and Intakt Records, Patrik Landolt. Published by Intakt Records.

Soundsamples of this CD

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Evan Parker / Barry Guy / Paul Lytton - Music For David Mossman (Live At Vortex London) INTAKT RECORDS 2108

Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Paul Lytton – three legendary figures in the field of improvisation – have each developed their own epochal styles. These long-time friends and collaborators now present the latest of their Trio recordings – part of an ongoing series that began in 1980 with the now out-of-print LP 'Tracks'. Their powerful improvisations reveal them as a trio of unyielding innovation, both conserving and constantly renewing a rich heritage of achievement in free jazz.

Evan Parker writes in the liner notes: "Collective free improvisation is the utopian state arrived at in that other «little life» as the late John Stevens called the mental space of music making that happens when musicians of a like mind («birds of a feather») play freely together. Paul Lytton and I first met in 1967 at a music festival in a park in Birmingham where I was playing in duo with John, Paul was playing with a jazz big band and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac were «topping the bill» (as they used to say). In the next years we all played together in different combinations and permutations including Barry’s London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the Parker-Lytton duo. In 1980 we started to play as the trio Parker-Guy-Lytton."

Soundsamples of this CD

1. Music for David Mossman I 12:50

2. Music for David Mossman II 11:58

3. Music for David Mossman III 24:15

4. Music for David Mossman IV 12:29

Evan Parker: Saxophone

Barry Guy: Bass

Paul Lytton: Drums

Music by Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Paul Lytton. Recorded live at Vortex Jazz Club London, July 14, 2016. 

Digital recording to multi track: Ali Ward. Mixdown to stereo: Sam Parker. Mastering: Adam Skeaping.

Post production and editing: Matt Wright and Evan Parker. 

Liner notes: Evan Parker. Cover art: Trevor Sutton and Ferdinand Penker.

Graphic design: Jonas Schoder. Photo: Caroline Forbes. 

Produced by Evan Parker and Intakt Records, Patrik Landolt.

Evan Parker / John Edwards / John Russell - Walthamstow Moon (ByrdOut 2017)

By Paul Acquaro / freejazzblog.org

An homage of sorts ... in November 1961, John Coltrane played at the Granada Theatre in Walthamstow, North East London, on A Jazz at the Philharmonic tour. A young Evan Parker was in the audience that night, and the event obviously left an indelible impression. 55 years later, Parker returned to the scene of the 'crime' (a cinema located at 186 Hoe Street E17) with guitarist John Russell and bassist John Edwards and commenced on a recording inspired by the memory.

And how could this show not have impressed? It was after all John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tuner, Reggie Workman, and Elvin Jones belting out the now classics 'My Favorite Things', 'Naima', 'Impressions' ... 

However, what Parker and company do in the same physical space inhabits a much different musical one. This is certainly not a note-for-note remake, rather it's a deep dive into the musical vocabulary that grew from the musical experimentations that took hold in London in the mid-1960s with groups like Spontaneous Music Ensemble. A direct link, of course, Parker, whose melodic bursts and expressive inflections guide this music. Russell, on acoustic guitar, channels the influence of Derek Bailey in his use of jarring chord tones and rhythmically abstract slashing. Edwards' contribution on bass is endlessly fascinating in how he connects everyone at key moments with a well placed pluck or bowed passage, propelling the songs in unexpected ways.

This is a rich treat. For example, on just one track, like 'Mirth', there is so much to unpack that it really can serve as an abstract for the whole recording. The syncopated phrases from Russell's guitar feels natural but there is no easily discernible pattern, Edwards' bass work provides depth and texture that thrusts the group forward with no obvious pulse. Most of all what you feel is the dedication to the musical whole emanating from Parker's saxophone. From each squiggle of sound to rapid runs through scales and other elliptical patterns, it is utterly mesmerizing.

1. Mirth 6:18

2. Leonine Aspect 4:32

3. Marvel 6:45

4. Saturnine Aspect 6:39

5. Maud 7:09

6. Walthamstow Moon 4:49

Evan Parker saxophones

John Russell guitar

John Edwards double bass

Evan Parker / John Russell / Ian Brighton / Philipp Wachsmann / Marcio Mattos / Trevor Taylor - Reunion (Live from Cafe Oto) FMR RECORDS 2017

On August 14th 2016 Cafe Oto staged a reunion of a group of old friends , the group Stringthing featuring Ian Brighton Electric Guitar, Philip Wachsmann Violin, Trevor Taylor Percussion and electronics and Marcio Matttos cello , with Evan Parker saxophone and john Russell acoustic guitar String thing had not recorded through circumstances since 1988 when they recorded 'Eleven years from Yesterday (FMR02) Coincidently only the second cd in the FMR catalogue

1 Here, And Hear 6:35 

2 Why Did We Leave It So Long ? 31:36 

3 Walthamstow Cheesecutter 15:53 

4 What Else Did You Expect ? 15:43 

Evan Parker soprano saxophone (3,4)

John Russell guitar (3,4) 

Ian Brighton guitar (1,2,4)

Philipp Wachsmann violin (2,4)

Marcio Mattos double bass (2,4)

Trevor Taylor percussion, electronics (2,4)

Mat Maneri / Evan Parker / Lucian Ban - Sounding Tears (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2017)

Over the course of a quarter century career American violist Mat Maneri has “changed the way the jazz world listens to the violin and viola” (AllAboutJazz.com) and has established an international reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation. Maneri posses an immediately recognizable sound and approach which marries the distinct worlds of jazz and microtonal music in a fluid, remarkably expressive fashion which The Wire dubbed “endlessly fascinating.” Over the course of his career, Maneri has worked with 20th century icons of improvised music including his father Joe Maneri, Cecil Taylor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Craig Taborn and many others.

For Sounding Tears, his first release under his own name (not as co-leader or collaborator) in 12 years, Maneri has enlisted legendary British saxophonist Evan Parker, one of European avant-garde’s leading voices for the past four decades, alongside his long-standing collaborator, Romanian expat, pianist Lucian Ban.

The improvisations conjured by these improvisers bespeak a music of the new millennium – tender and lyrical while also angular, gritty and suspenseful. Reflecting on Sounding Tears Maneri says: “Music begins before music. As an improviser the first note I play sets in motion the whole world. As a trio, where does musical intimacy come from? Is it improvisation, is it chamber music? Is it jazz? The music on this album, the experience, empathy and the shared history that Evan and Lucian bring to Sounding Tears, is our answer to those questions.”

Maneri and Ban have been working together for close to a decade spanning a number of different projects. They met while working on Ban and bassist John Hebert’s Enesco Re-Imagined (Sunnyside, 2009). On one piece played a memorable duo, so remarkable that they didn’t hesitate to begin touring as a duo. This touring relationship ultimately resulted in their acclaimed recording, Transylvanian Concert (ECM, 2013). It was at the Bucharest release show for Transylvanian Concert that they invited Parker to be a special guest. The music was elevated to a new plane. The three played a few more times together before heading to Tedesco Studios in New Jersey in 2016 to record what would become Sounding Tears.

The music on the album showcases a side of the saxophonist’s playing not often heard on record – a more introverted, crooked way of phrasing, tenderly enveloped in Maneri and Ban’s sonic universe. Over the course of eight free improvisations and two written melodies, this trio showcases a distinct language; a language built on equality and listening with no grandstanding or hierarchical principles at play.

A notable influence on this album’s concept was the seminal 1995 ECM album Time Will Tell by Paul Bley, Evan Parker and Barre Phillips. This album meant an immeasurable amount to both Maneri and Ban. A sense of space invoked throughout and the collective phrasing were influential to both musicians. Bley was also one of the first people to give Joe Maneri and Mat Maneri the recognition they so deserved. Bley recommended them to ECM Records’ Manfred Eicher, with whom they went on to record with Barre Phillips and many others in a series of albums which are still cherished for their inventiveness.

Maneri sums up the spirit of Sounding Tears. “It’s like Lester Young mixed with something insane; rooted in the past of an alternate universe which may have never existed.” No other words can describe the dualities that this record holds within itself – the music is both cutting-edge and remarkably progressive while also being firmly rooted in tradition, song, and improvisational tactics which recall 20th century modern classical music in addition to jazz. The sound of Sounding Tears is the sound of three master musicians playing with integrity and heart, listening as much as asserting, letting silence dictate as much as sonic density. It’s a treat and a delight to hear a recontextualized Evan Parker sitting patiently, enmeshing himself in a codified universe that Maneri and Ban have been crafting for several years.