Jazz Articles about William Parker

William Parker Trio: Painter's Spring

by Mark Corroto
July 1, 2000

For avant-garde musician William Parker, the outside can be very introspective. This prolific, giant bassist is quite the gentle soul, not an image his work with free jazz musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Peter Brotzmann, Charles Gayle, and David Ware would lead you to believe. With Painter’s Spring and his co-led recordings with Matthew Shipp and the band, Other Dimensions In Music, Parker reveals a lyricism and peacefulness not generally associated with the often-labeled barbarous music.

Painter’s Spring is the ...

William Parker & The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra: Mayor of Punkville

by AAJ Staff
July 1, 2000

Few musicians have managed to integrate life, art, spirituality, and philosophy the way William Parker has. Author of three volumes of poetry, exponent of art as an alternative to materialism and entrapment, spiritual lightning pole, and master bassist: what else is left? The Little Huey, back on CD after 1997's sensational Sunrise in the Tone World, continues to realize Parker's very personal vision.

The underlying principle behind the new two-CD set, Mayor of Punkville, is freedom. But with up to ...

William Parker's In Order to Survive: Posium Pendasem

by Derek Taylor
September 1, 1999

Wood and metal, strings and sweat. With these terrestrial materials and a seemingly bottomless store of imagination William Parker has crafted some of the most celestially expansive music in the history of jazz. At first glance such a contention may appear rash and circumspect. Take a listen to virtually any of the discs Parker has graced in the nearly three decades he’s spent as a purveyor of improvised music and you’ll witness its truth. This latest release by his In ...