Articles

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

RADIO February 5, 2020

Jim Black, Mario Santos, William Parker, Dave Sewelson and More

Is it too early to choose a “best-of" for 2020. I know it's only January, but drummer Jim Black has released an absolute killer of an album with pianist Elias Stemeseder and bassist Thomas Morgan that is an outstanding piece of work. Reckon came out on the Intakt label from Switzerland in January, so be on the lookout for it. Black is as unpredictable and unique as ever, Stemeseder shows why he's one of the most interesting younger pianists, and ...

RADIO January 30, 2020

Works For Me, Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, Eunhye Jeong and William Parker

By Bob Osborne

Their are four featured albums on this show Works for Me --a new group of musicians put together by Marc Free at Posi-tone records kicks off that labels output for the new year/decade in fine form. The Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, The TJCO has been the natural evolution of two previous didactic music projects: “The Unreal Book" and “The Tower Jazz Workshop." Throughout the years, these experiments have reached a more synthetized dimension and contributed to ...

RADIO August 15, 2019

New Music from William Parker and Whit Dickey

By Bob Osborne

Great music from the Aum Fidelity label with new albums from William Parker and Whit Dickey together with a selection of other recent releases and some classic “Bird." Playlist William Parker in Order to Survive “Eternal Is the Voice of Love II" from Live/Shapeshifter (Aum Fidelity) 00:00 Whit Dickey Tao Quartets “Peace Planet" from Peace Planet & Box of Light (Aum Fidelity) 08:56 Warren Galea “Chrysanthemums" from The Odyssey (Vento Azul) 19:30 Stephan Crump, Ingrid Laubrock, Cory Smythe ...

ALBUM REVIEW July 20, 2019

William Parker/In Order to Survive: Live/Shapeshifter

By Don Phipps

Another stellar effort from the genius known as William Parker, Live/Shapeshifter uses the immense talents of his “In Order To Survive" group -which consists of long time collaborators Cooper-Moore on piano, Hamid Drake on drums, and Rob Brown on alto sax--to craft a statement of free-wheeling dynamism at play. One of the top composers and bass players to ever take up the art form known as jazz, Parker offers up a double album's worth of material, all of it recorded ...

ALBUM REVIEW July 5, 2018

William Parker: Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics

By Hrayr Attarian

Bassist and composer William Parker is a tireless innovator whose entire oeuvre is filled with singular moments of brilliance and artistic exploration. However, Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics is his boldest and most unique work to date. A variation on Richard Waters' waterphone, the aquasonic consists of tone rods and contains a small amount of water. When the rods are percussed or bowed, it produces an eerie, haunting sound. Drummer Jackson Krall custom-built Parker's own version of ...

ALBUM REVIEW July 2, 2018

William Parker: Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics

By Dan McClenaghan

William Parker, who plays multiple instruments, is best known for his work as a jazz bassist, leaning to the avant-garde side of the spectrum, with albums including Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind (Century, 2016) and the marvelous 2016 offering Meditation/Resurrection (AUM Fidelity). Always an adventurous soul--he began early in his career playing with pianist Cecil Taylor--Parker puts his bass down and flies further out with Lake of Light: Compositions for Aquasonics. “Aquasonics" are sounds created by the ...

ALBUM REVIEW June 24, 2018

William Parker: Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics

By Jakob Baekgaard

William Parker is known as a bassist, composer, poet, writer, educator and philosopher, but all these words just cover one term: musician. This is important to understand one of the latest releases from the prolific Parker: the alluringly titled Lake of Light, with the subtitle Compositions for AquaSonics. A musician in Parker's sense is not just someone who plays an instrument, but it is a way of being in touch with life itself: the tone world. This tone world takes ...