Jazz Articles about Evan Parker

About Evan Parker

Album Review

Parker-Schlippenbach-Lytton: America 2003

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 26, 2006

Nel 2003 il trio composto da Evan Parker, Alexander von Schlippenbach e Paul Lytton ha compiuto un lungo tour degli USA. 18 concerti in trenta giorni, oltre undici mila miglia percorse, quasi quaranta ore di registrazione dalle quali sono tratti i due CD di questo America 2003. La formazione è dettata in parte dal caso, nel senso che il pianista ha sostituito all’ultimo momento il bassista Barry Guy. Sicchè, come ricorda Parker, la combinazione è ottenuta prendendo qualcosa sia dal ...

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Album Review

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: The Eleventh Hour

Read "The Eleventh Hour" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 24, 2005

With over a decade of serious and engaging electro-acoustic experimentation behind him--some of it with the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, some of it in other contexts--Evan Parker has produced his most ambitious and perfectly realised work in the genre to date in The Eleventh Hour: a masterpiece of sonic adventure and time travel. Not jazz as we previously knew it, Jim, but free collective improvisation with degrees of architectural form and lyric beauty we all too rarely get to enjoy. ...

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Album Review

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: The Eleventh Hour

Read "The Eleventh Hour" reviewed by John Kelman

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. ...

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Building a Jazz Library

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 ...

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Album Review

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

Read "Evan Parker with Birds (for Steve Lacy)" reviewed by Rex Butters

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 ...

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Album Review

Parker/Schlippenbach/Lytton: America 2003

Read "America 2003" reviewed by John Eyles

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 ...

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Album Review

Parker/Drumm/Zerang: Out Trios Volume Two

Read "Out Trios Volume Two" reviewed by Jon Opstad

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 ...