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Of Music and Brilliance, the Vision of Evan Parker
by Lloyd N. Peterson Jr.
It may be almost impossible to be involved in free improvisational forms and not be influenced by the compositional genius of Evan Parker. As a saxophonist, he has created one of the most original voices in the history of the instrument and after several decades, remains one of music's most important pioneers.Lloyd Peterson: Today our culture here in the U.S. appreciates art but seems to have difficulty with creativity that is not easily explained, understood, or identifiable. Is ...
Continue ReadingEvan Parker: Boustrophedon
by AAJ Italy Staff
E se alla fine l'annosa diatriba sulla opposizione/dialettica tra composizione e improvvisazione fosse solo frutto di un errore percettivo? Giusto chiederselo allora, quando l’ECM licenziò Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3 di Roscoe Mitchell, doveroso rinnovare l’interrogativo in occasione dell’uscita del disco gemello di quell’opera straordinaria, Boustrophedon, con Evan Parker a guidare il Transatlantic Art Ensemble in vece del sassofonista di Chicago. Un Evan Parker che mai nel corso della carriera si era concesso tali e tanti vezzi accademici - ...
Continue ReadingEvan Parker's Psi: Fifty Not Out
by John Eyles
With its three latest releases, saxophonist Evan Parker's Psi label has reached the significant milestone of having put out fifty CDs. In their way, the three latest CDs typify the label's output since its first release in late 2001; that output has several strands running through it, and each of these releases continues one strand. Over the years Psi has maintained a fine balance between new releases and reissues (many of the latter being former Incus label releases), between Evan ...
Continue ReadingEvan Parker / The Transatlantic Art Ensemble: Boustrophedon
by Budd Kopman
Saxophonist Evan Parker's marvelous and moving Boustrophedon is a companion piece to saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell's Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (ECM, 2007), recorded live in Munich the night before Mitchell's suite and using the same musicians, The Transatlantic Art Ensemble. Both Parker and Mitchell were commissioned to compose music for a symposium for improvised music, meaning real-time creativity, as well as the mixture of the composed and the improvised. Comparison between the works is inevitable, but ...
Continue ReadingEvan Parker: Boustrophedon
by Henry Smith
The follow-up to Roscoe Mitchell's Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (ECM, 2007), Evan Parker's Boustrophedon features the saxophonist/improviser conducting and playing with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble, a collected group of musicians from Europe and the U.S. brought together to perform these two semi-composed works for a Symposium for Improvised Music in Munich. The group, consisting of former and current participants in both men's careers, is a broad and accomplished collection of musicians fully capable of realizing Parker's unique vision.
Continue ReadingEvan Parker / The Transatlantic Art Ensemble: Boustrophedon
by John Kelman
The delineation between ECM's regular series and New Series has always been relatively clear--improvised music with the regular series, composed music on the New Series. Still, there's an increasingly substantial gray area, occupying a fuzzy space between the two. Reedman Roscoe Mitchell's outstanding Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (ECM, 2007) occupied that gray area, investigating the nexus where contemporary classical music and exploratory improvisation meet. Calling on the same expanded 14-piece Transatlantic Art Ensemble that Mitchell ...
Continue ReadingPeter Brötzmann: The Complete Machine Gun Sessions
by AAJ Italy Staff
Anche se risulta più comodo e affascinante considerare Machine Gun come una specie di big-bang da cui improvvisamente scaturì in mille direzioni la lava dell'improvvisazione europea [l'originaria stampa in sole 300 copie per la piccola etichetta Bro, i contemporanei movimenti di protesta in tutta Europa, il Vietnam contribuiscono certamente all'aura leggendaria], quella registrazione al Lila Eule di Brema del maggio 1968 fu tutt'altro che casuale ed è piuttosto l'esito dell'incontro di idee e personalità che già da qualche tempo si ...
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