Jazz Articles about Evan Parker

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: The Eleventh Hour

by John Kelman
September 17, 2005

Anyone fortunate enough to hear British free jazz icon Evan Parker deliver his solo performance at this year's Ottawa International Jazz Festival got to hear him at his most exposed. While much has been written about his extended approaches on the soprano and tenor saxophones--including circular breathing that allows him to create virtually endless waves of sound--Parker's significance and impact on the world of free jazz can only be truly appreciated when you have the chance to see it live. ...

Free Improvisation

by John Eyles
August 10, 2005

In Britain, in the mid-60s, free improvisation (often just called “improv") developed out of free jazz, eventually becoming a separate and distinct music. Free jazz gradually removed conventional structure -chords, melodic themes, regular rhythm--but free improvisation took their absence as its starting point. Essentially, free improvisation has no rules; in Derek Bailey's words, it is “playing without memory." Although there are countless exceptions, free jazz developed in the USA whereas free improvisation blossomed in Europe. However, some ...

Evan Parker: Evan Parker with Birds (for Steve Lacy)

by Rex Butters
July 3, 2005

Someone recently told me that they didn't care for outside music, because to really hear what's going on, you have to stop everything and sit inside it. On Evan Parker with Birds, the sax sounder invites you to sit inside an interdimensional aviary while he joins the conversation around him. Indispensable to those conversations, the duo of John Coxon and Ashley Wales produces, alters, and teases the edges with an ambiance not always avian. An outgrowth of their collaboration with ...

Parker/Schlippenbach/Lytton: America 2003

by John Eyles
May 4, 2005

Evan Parker is a member of two long standing trios, the Evan Parker Trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton, and the Schlippenbach Trio with Alexander von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens. On very rare occasions--such as Parker's 50th birthday--all five musicians have gotten together and have even been known to play together as a quintet. I do not know of another time the personnel has been mixed like this. It came about in May 2003, when Schlippenbach replaced Guy on ...

Parker/Drumm/Zerang: Out Trios Volume Two

by Jon Opstad
October 23, 2004

The first thing to make clear here is that this recording is not for a general jazz audience. Those readers who get more than their fair share of white noise when the TV can't get a signal are not going to find a great deal to please their ears within the three quarters of an hour of “music" making up this CD. I put “music" in quotes not to question the quality of what is on offer here, but rather ...

Evan Parker/Phillip Wachsmann/Hugh Davies/Eddie Provost: 888

by Rex Butters
September 7, 2004

These four esteemed improvisers participated with others of their kind at the New Music Days series of concerts as part of the Southend International Jazz Festival in 2003. To engender endless numerological speculation, they chose to perform at 8pm on 8/8, and from those performances come a solo piece each, plus a lengthy ensemble expedition into the unknown that surpasses expectations built from the solos.

Piccolo pizzicatos and raw scraping open Phillip Wachsmann's mercurial display. A brief melodic ...

Evan Parker's Electro-Accoustic Ensemble: Memory/Vision

by Dan McClenaghan
June 8, 2004

In 1968 Miles Davis' use of the Fender Rhodes electric piano on Filles de Kilimanjaro caused quite s stir. This same year saw a seminal classical/electronic music release entitled Switched on Bach by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, a set of Johann Sebastian Bach compositions played on the then-new music synthesizer. 1968 was also the year the Beatles pioneered the use of studio wizardry on songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever" and “I Am the Walrus." The point being this: jazz has ...