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William Parker: Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics
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 ...
read moreWilliam Parker: Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics
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 ...
read moreWilliam Parker: Lake of Light: Compositions for AquaSonics
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 ...
read moreA Musical Portrait Of William Parker
This new installment of our “50/50" series--a collection of mixtapes made in collaboration with the artists hosted at Centro d'Arte--is dedicated to bassist and composer William Parker, a driving force of New York's free jazz scene since the 1970s, and one of the most brilliant musical minds of today's creative music. The selection features five tracks taken from the composer's vast discography; the other five are picked by William Parker himself from some of his favorite records.
read moreVision Festival 2018
23rd Annual Vision Festival Roulette New York, NY May 23-28, 2018 Introduction The Vision Festival somewhat surprisingly but reassuringly stands proud as the longest-lived annually produced jazz festival in New York. While the central plank remains what the Festival terms avant jazz, it's interspersed with poetry, dance, art, and film in a way which matches rather than detracts from the music. For its 23rd edition the Festival returned to Brooklyn's Roulette after three ...
read moreWilliam Parker: Embracing The Unknown
His is one of the most distinctive and respected voices on double bass today. William Parker, the tireless composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator and poet, is still today omnipresent on the contemporary free jazz scene. What's more, he has been consistently for the last four decades. The William Parker Sessionography: A Work in Progress by Rick Lopez clocks in at just below 500 pages, and, as the title suggests, it hasn't finished growing. In it are of course referenced his many acclaimed ...
read moreTroy Collins' Best Releases of 2017
Considering the quantity of recordings released in a year's time, attempting to compile a comprehensive end of the year list mentioning every first-rate session would be difficult at best. The ten titles listed below represent a fertile cross-section of some of the most compelling modern jazz heard in 2017. William Parker Quartets Meditation/Resurrection (AUM Fidelity) The common thread running through both sets of this diverse double-album is the camaraderie William Parker enjoys with ...
read moreWilliam Parker Quartets: Meditation / Resurrection
Bassist William Parker's Quartets (note the plural) presented here are, of course just a fraction of the ensembles he is currently organizing and working in. It is these 2 quartets that manifest the Yin and Yang that is Parker. The question might be, is his Quartet of trumpeter Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, alto saxophonist Rob Brown, and drummer Hamid Drake, the Yang, or positive/active/male principal in nature, and his In Order To Survive quartet with pianist Cooper-Moore switching with Nelson the Yin, ...
read moreI Am Not Your Negro: History Revisited through a Personal Lens
I Am Not Your Negro Narrator: Samuel L. Jackson Director: Raoul Peck Distributor: Velvet Films This electrifying docu-drama invoking the eloquent words and profound personal experience of the great writer James Baldwin brings to life the stormy and transformational period of the Civil Rights movement in a way that is far more vivid than the images many saw on their small TV screens in the 1960s. The images, sound track, Baldwin's ...
read moreWilliam Parker: 65th Birthday Celebration Concert at the Painted Bride
William Parker and Friends Painted Bride Arts Center William Parker 65th Birthday Celebration Philadelphia, PA January 21, 2017 To celebrate the 65th birthday of legendary bassist William Parker, the Painted Bride Arts Center, Ars Nova Workshop, and Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound joined forces to sponsor a top of the line sextet including Parker in the catbird seat and Zankel at the helm. For those who don't know about Parker, he ...
read moreJakob Baekgaard's Best Releases Of 2016
The world seems more uncertain than ever before, but in times of uncertainty, music provides comfort and a hope that it is actually possible to communicate across borders, whether they be physical or psychological. Among the releases that caught my attention this year, the one that meant most to me by far is not on this list, and it was not even reviewed on All About Jazz, not by me or any other writer. Bassist, composer and ...
read moreGiving Birth to Sound: Women in Creative Music
Giving Birth to Sound: Women in Creative Music Renate Da Rin (ed.) and William Parker (coed.) 294 Pages ISBN: 978-3-00-049279-2 Buddy's Knife 2015 Every time a book about music is written, the history of music is also rewritten and musicians are included or left out, and old and new myths rejected or confirmed. This is something that many authors are conscious about, but seldom an issue that is addressed. Therefore, it is ...
read morePoll Results
All About Jazz would like to thank the 4,000 members who participated in our poll to help us identify the world's top jazz venues. For a recap, click here.
Jazz Story
By Kenne Thomas
Member since: 2017
I was first exposed to jazz through my parents and their friends. My father, James S. Whitehead played alto saxophone in Chicago in the late 1940s and early 50s. His record collection exposed me to the great sounds of Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt and others
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