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Andrew Cyrille, William Parker & Enrico Rava: 2 Blues For Cecil
by Dan McClenaghan
Finland's TUM Records wrapped up 2021 with a free jazz flourish, releasing trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet's stellar box set, The Chicago Symphonies and also Smith's masterful A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday. The momentum continued in January 2022 with the label's release of The OGJB Quartet's Ode To O and—the subject of this review—2 Blues For Cecil, from drummer Andrew Cyrille, bassist William Parker and trumpeter & flugelhornist Enrico Rava. All three players here are ...
Continue ReadingWilliam Parker, Francois Carrier & Javier Subatin
by Maurice Hogue
This week's spotlight is clearly on the great bassist, composer, multi-instrumentalist & culture maker, William Parker. His 10-CD box set is almost overwhelming in its scope and originality. You'll hear a sampling from three of the CDs, plus a track from a new recording with his partner, Patricia Nicholson. We check out new discs from Montreal's Francois Carrier and Portuguese guitarist Javier Subatin, the Flow Trio with Joe McPhee, and a preview of an upcoming release by the great Tony ...
Continue ReadingWhit Dickey / William Parker / Matthew Shipp: Village Mothership
by John Sharpe
Village Mothership presents a constellation of stars which first assembled some three decades ago. Although released on drummer Whit Dickey's Tao Forms imprint, on this 2020 studio date the trio, completed by bassist William Parker and pianist Matthew Shipp, manifests as a cooperative effort, unlike their first appearance on Circular Temple (Quinton, 1990) under Shipp's leadership. As well as being the pianist's trio of choice for several years, the threesome was also 75% of esteemed saxophonist David S. Ware's classic ...
Continue ReadingFrancisco Mela featuring Matthew Shipp and William Parker: Music Frees Our Souls Vol. 1
by John Sharpe
Music Frees Our Souls furthers Cuban drummer Francisco Mela's ongoing ventures in freely improvised surroundings. Already well-established with heavyweight leaders such as McCoy Tyner, Joe Lovano and Esperanza Spalding, as well as a series of dates under his own name, Mela has now enlisted pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker, two of the best in this particular business, in his quest for spontaneous magic. When joining such a long-lasting partnership, (Parker and Shipp first hooked up ...
Continue ReadingOther Minds 25, Day 2
by John Chacona
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 Taube Atrium Theater Other Minds Festival San Francisco, CA October 15, 2021 There are festivals for which centering the social aspect of music is the point of the exercise. Conceived, as founder Charles Amirkhanian put it in Thursday's pre-concert talk, a vehicle “to support artists who don't... have commercial potential," San Francisco's Other Minds is not Bonnaroo. Yet each of the ...
Continue ReadingWhit Dickey / William Parker / Matthew Shipp: Village Mothership
by Mark Corroto
If drummer Whit Dickey, bassist William Parker, and pianist Matthew Shipp were a rock band, we might expect them to cover their classic album Circular Temple (Quinton Records, 1992) an LP, later re-released on the Infinite Zero label in 1994. Of course they are not a rock band, but If they were, we probably would demand they perform the music on Circular Temple in the exact same manner as it sounded three decades earlier. But that's just not the way ...
Continue ReadingMatthew Shipp / William Parker: Re-Union
by John Sharpe
Some thirty years after they first recorded together as part of saxophonist David S. Ware's celebrated Quartet, pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker convened once more in a Paris studio for Re-Union. And though their signature styles have become familiar in the interim thanks to sizeable discographies and frequent collaborations, the pair's ultra-refined chemistry remains as potent as ever. Their intimate dialogue both entices and enthralls on the four snatched-from-the-air inventions here, engendering a smile of recognition and a ...
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