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William "Spaceman" Patterson

Instrumentalist/ Producer/ Music Director/ Music Supervisor/ Composer/Arranger/Teacher

Spaceman is both a popular musician and consummate musical virtuoso who performs, produces, composes, and arranges all genres of music. His experience in the field of entertainment crosses a wide spectrum.

Patterson studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the New York Institute of Technology. He has also studied privately with Coleridge Taylor Perkinson and James ”Blood” Ulmer.

His musical credits that read like a veritable who’s who in music, He has performed and/or recorded with such artists as: Miles Davis, Mariah Carey Luther Vandross, Sun Ra, Tom Browne,

LL Cool J, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, Ornette Coleman, Roberta Flack, Curtis Mayfield, Lenny White, Sly Stone, James Brown, Wallace Roney, Eric Clapton, Mary J Blige, KRS ONE, David Sanborn, Bill Cosby, Grover Washington Jr. Robert Glasper, George Clinton, Phil Collins, Bernard Wright, The Temptations, Marcus Miller, The Isley Brothers, Chico DeBarge, Mtume, Gwen Guthrie, The Barkays, Q Tip, Lena Horne, Michael Henderson, Olatunji, Al Green, Herbie Hancock, Doug E. Fresh, Big Joe Turner, James Blood Ulmer, Aaliyah, Bootsy Collins, Ziggy Marley, B. B. King,  Jahiem,  Maceo Parker, Stetsasonic, Frank Ocean, and many others.

His musical styling has graced many a hit record, movies, TV shows, and commercials.

TV and movie projects include “The Cosby Show”, “A Different World”, “Sesame Street,” “The Cosby Mysteries”, “One Life To Live”, ”Cosby”, “Fatherhood”, ”Unbreakable”, “New York Undercover”, “House Party”, “Posse”, The Inkwell”, Something Wild”, “Rave”, the acclaimed HBO film, ”Unchained Memories”, Readings From the Slave Narratives, ”Polynesian Power”, “Unstoppable” (Conversation w/ Gordon Parks Sr. Ossie Davis, and Melvin Van Peebles), and the award winning “Fast Pitch”.  His Theater credits include, “The Love Space Demands” with Ntozake Shange, “Thunder Knocking On The Door”, “Rhinestone”, “Pippin”, “Grease”,” Mother Courage”, “Dream On Monkey Mountain”, “Ain’t Supposed To Die A Natural Death”(Audelco Award winner Best Music Direction). He was the producer/director of the TV show “Literary Living”.

 

 His vision has now placed him in the unique position to develop a 21st century model of a multi-media/entertainment/educational entity.  The realization that we are strategically positioned in the world of evolving multi-media opens up a myriad of opportunities to forge new entities of influence in the market place and “Pop Culture”. Patterson draws on all his experiences in performance, arts, media, technology, etc. to carve out a new paradigm in developing, producing, teaching, packaging, and marketing varied sources of intellectual content to the public.

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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating William Parker's birthday today!

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. Born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, he studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul West. During Parker’s prolific career, he has recorded over 150 albums, had countless celebrated stage appearances, and helped shaped the jazz scene for both his ...

1
Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating William Parker's birthday today!

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. Born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, he studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul West. During Parker’s prolific career, he has recorded over 150 albums, had countless celebrated stage appearances, and helped shaped the jazz scene for both his ...

7
Event

William Parker Biography Celebration With Joe McPhee And Cisco Bradley

William Parker Biography Celebration With Joe McPhee And Cisco Bradley

Source: James Keepnews

Elysium Furnace Works is proud to present bassist, composer, bandleader and a signal figure in creative music worldwide, William Parker, as part of a celebration of the recent publication of his long-overdue biography, Universal Tonality—The Life and Music of William Parker. Written by Pratt Institute professor Cisco Bradley and published by Duke University Press, this biography has already been acclaimed as a major contribution to jazz scholarship and the sociocultural history of downtown New York City. This event—co-sponsored by Beacon, ...

Video / DVD

3 Don Patterson Ballads

3 Don Patterson Ballads

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

When I started collecting Don Patterson albums in the early 1970s, I'd buy them without hearing the music first on the radio. Always a daring move back then, since you couldn't return what you didn't like. If you sliced open the plastic, you owned it. The reason I made these purchases with such confidence is that Patterson nearly always included at least one ballad on his albums. That, for me, was where the action was. Patterson's intros on ballads raised ...

1
Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating William Parker's birthday today!

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. Born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, he studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul West. During Parker’s prolific career, he has recorded over 150 albums, had countless celebrated stage appearances, and helped shaped the jazz scene for both his ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating William Parker's birthday today!

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. Born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, he studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul West. During Parker’s prolific career, he has recorded over 150 albums, had countless celebrated stage appearances, and helped shaped the jazz scene for both his ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating William Parker's birthday today!

William Parker is a musician, improviser, composer, educator, and author. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donso ngoni and gembri. Born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, he studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, Jimmy Garrison, and Paul West. During Parker’s prolific career, he has recorded over 150 albums, had countless celebrated stage appearances... Read more.

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6
Event

Esperanza Spalding and William Parker Perform At Mind-Builders 40th Anniversary Gala On November 3 At Lehman College

Esperanza Spalding and William Parker Perform At Mind-Builders 40th Anniversary Gala On November 3 At Lehman College

Source: Scott Thompson Public Relations

Mind-Builders 40th Anniversary Gala with Esperanza Spalding on November 3 at Lehman College Lehman Stages/Lovinger Theatre 250 Bedford Park Blvd. West Bronx, NY 10468 “Magic...pure imagination and also incredibly tactile." —NPR Music Mind-Builders 40th Anniversary Gala at Lehman College celebrate the 40th anniversary of Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center at Lovinger Theater at our first ever Gala event. 5:30 PM: VIP Reception includes Meet The Artists 7:00 PM: Performances with Audience/Artist Q&A Performances by special celebrity guests/honorees ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Jazz Musician of the Day: William Parker

Source: Michael Ricci

All About Jazz is celebrating William Parker's birthday today!

As Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe stated in July 2002, “William Parker has emerged as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz.” He is working in many of the more important groups in this genre, some of the most prestigious being his own, i.e. The Curtis Mayfield Project, Little Huey Creative Orchestra, In Order to Survive, William Parker’s Quartet and other groups. Mr... Read more.

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Recording

William Parker Quartet & In Order To Survive Double-Album To Be Released June 23 On AUM Fidelity

William Parker Quartet & In Order To Survive Double-Album To Be Released June 23 On AUM Fidelity

Source: Steven Joerg

Meditation / Resurrection is a double-album presenting a bounty of beautiful new William Parker compositions performed by two of his flagship ensembles, the Quartet-&- In Order To Survive. It was recorded & mixed live during a one-day studio session in late 2016. This is Parker & the groups’ followup release to 2013’s epic Wood Flute Songs box set. At the core of both groups is Parker’s foundational bass together with rhythm twin, the incomparable Hamid Drake. Their partnership–two decades deep ...

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Eric's Vals
From The Hat with the Grin and the Chuckle
by Ben Thomas (US)

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