Understanding William Parker’s Tone World

Trying to explain and itemize the currents that affect the music collected in William Parker’s most recent 10-album set, downbeat’s Dave Cantor describes the bassist as New York’s free-jazz caretaker. While the phrase could be more felicitous, it does highlight how Parker, from his earliest work with saxophonists David S. Ware and Frank Lowe in the 1970s up to today, has always operated within the so-called avant-garde sector. Since that time and because of his work as artistic director of the city’s now famous Vision Festival and leadership of ensembles including the In Order To Survive quartet and The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, he has provided a forum for many advanced musicians including pianists Cooper-Moore and Matthew Shipp and singers such as Lisa Sokolov as well as dancers and visual artists. Concerned with communicating with as many people as possible through non-verbal universal tonality since he was a child in the Bronx, by performing his music in many different contexts and in many countries, Parker has extended his original musical concepts everywhere he has been.