Jazz Articles about William Parker

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William Parker: Luc's Lantern

by John Kelman
March 17, 2005

Bassist William Parker is one of those artists you can count on to deliver. Whether it's in the more powerful context of his Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra or the smaller but no more restricted confines of the Eric Dolphy-informed O'Neal's Porch quartet, Parker has, since emerging from the aegis of pianist Cecil Taylor in the '80s, developed his own body of work that is as significant for its breadth as it is for its boldness and lack of self-consciousness. ...

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William Parker: Luc's Lantern

by Mark Corroto
March 15, 2005

You might not get bassist William Parker to agree, but his music has always focused on assemblage and order. You can hear it in the large congregations of his Little Huey Creative Music Ensemble or his work with Cecil Taylor and Peter Brötzmann. His internal logic always is expressed by his sheer will and determination to communicate his message to the listener.

As his projects get more intimate, as in this trio session, his music becomes more accessible. ...

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William Parker: Everything Is Valid

by Eyal Hareuveni
March 7, 2005

William Parker is, no doubt, the most remarkable bassist in the post-Mingus era. A great musician who is gifted with an uncanny ability to make any artist near him--musician, dancer, painter or poet--perform better. Parker presents a musical vision that is full with compassion and commitment to his community at large.

William Parker began his European tour in the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival, performing with Roy Campbell Jr.'s Pyramid Trio. Parker and drummer Hamid Drake recorded a trio ...

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William Parker and the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra: Mass for the Healing of the World

by Rex Butters
November 9, 2004

Recorded live in Verona, Italy in 1998, Mass for the Healing of the World provides instant nostalgia in the quick change world of modern jazz. Built around William Parker's luminous and now defunct In Order To Survive band, the disc delivers an encore taste of Cooper-Moore's big handed piano stylings and Susie Ibarra's pandemic percussion with Parker's subharmonic depth charges. Old friends Rob Brown and Roy Campbell, Jr. join tenor titan Assif Tshar and others to create this lively version ...

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William Parker & The Ohnedaruth String Quartet: A Flower for Feldman

by Derek Taylor
April 1, 2004

In the spring of 2001, bassist William Parker made a brief trip to England under the auspices of a holiday with his wife Patricia. A clandestine purpose behind the excursion was to meet at a studio location with a select cadre of London musicians. Turns out Parker has long been a fan of Morton Feldman's works and has harbored the closet desire to perform them for quite some time. As he explains in his self-scripted liners to this disc, the ...

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William Parker Violin Trio: Scrapbook

by AAJ Staff
October 7, 2003

More and more these days it seems that William Parker has been drawing from the wellspring of African American roots music. That may sound like a strange idea, considering that the bassist has long been floating on the fringes outside mainstream jazz, hardly an icon of accessibility. Some of his best work has been in settings where the wildest ideas of collective improvisation fall together with pulse-raising intensity. Parker's respect for the groove may have dropped a couple layers below ...

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A Fireside Chat with William Parker

by AAJ Staff
May 16, 2003

William Parker is the best bassist of my time. Whether or not people coming to terms with hard bop having ended with the Alfred Lion Blue Note days learn to appreciate Parker is not a question of if, but when. Parker's uncanny ability to make saxophonists that play alongside him better is akin to Jimmy Garrison and Henry Grimes. The latter, a lesson in the often, cruel neglectfulness of the times we live in, a bed we have made and ...