Seraphic Light

The Village Voice once proclaimed that William Parker was “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” The New York Times called Parker a “champion of improvised music, community building, and appreciation of beauty.” If Parker had his druthers, though, he would likely strip away the hierarchy not just of superlatives but also of money in music, so that the art could simply exist. “Music is a great force, and we have to get it out there,” he once said. “We will continue to exist without the praise and the talk and the pay.” Parker grew up in the South Bronx, playing along to his father’s record collection by blowing into the end of a toy gun, pretending it was a trumpet. He got a gig the day he bought his first bass at 19 and often walked nine miles across New York, his bass strapped across his back, to play on the Lower East Side. He has not looked back since. He played with Cecil Taylor and David S. Ware for decades before emerging as a bandleader in the ’90s, becoming wildly prolific in part by being open to Universality Tonality—that is, the belief that everyone can tap into the shared communication, wisdom, and redemption of music. Big Ears 2027 will celebrate the 75th birthday of this free music powerhouse and mentor by hosting five of his bands.

Parker has played with Matthew Shipp and Daniel Carter for decades, just separately. The pianist Shipp first recorded with Parker in the early ’90s, when the bassist was just at the edge of his band-leading career; the saxophonist Carter played on a very early Parker effort as a bandleader, 1980’s Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace, long before he launched In Order to Survive. But the three only rendezvoused in April 2017, on a stage at Tufts University to talk about race and art in America before delivering a brilliant hour of music. Shipp and Parker move together in such a way that the absence of a drummer is barely felt, as piano and bass push against one another like a stick to a drum skin. Shipp moves between the ecstatic repetition of minimalism and incensed free passages, with Parker tucking beneath him. Sliding through the seam between them, Carter shifts from long, glowing passages to staccato outbursts, his peers sometimes pulling up to make extra space. This trio has since expanded to work with drummer Gerald Cleaver, but appearances by this truly wondrous three-piece remain rare, making this Big Ears set a momentous occasion.