William Hooker Quartet

Half a century ago, free jazz liberated William Hooker; he has never gone back, only forward into wide-open improvisation, into music that feels every time like a new explosion of the spirit. Hooker was raised in Connecticut, his father a preacher in Beulah AME Zion Church. But when Hooker took to the drums at age 7, his parents didn’t circumscribe him to gospel music; he gigged constantly, whether backing Dionne Warwick or playing weddings. But during a stint in psychedelic California, he began to understand how personally emancipatory music could be, and he never played anyone else’s songs. He went back to Connecticut and then to New York, joining a vital scene that was interested in joining the explosive spirits of free jazz and noise rock. From records with Thurston Moore and Christian Marclay to Ava Mendoza and James Brandon Lewis, Hooker has built a massive catalogue of these testaments to freedom.

Hooker has also built dozens of ever-changing ensembles over the decades, from an orchestra to intimate duos. In them all, he combines restless drumming that speaks to the revelatory early works of Milford Graves with the spoken-word poetry Hooker began writing in California. His work is informed by mysticism and American history, by deep spirituality and family bonds. At Big Ears, he brings a particularly fascinating Quartet—lauded pianist and composer Mara Rosenbloom, legendary violinist Charles Burnham, and exploratory bassist Jair-Rôhm Parker Wells. Hooker never plays the same thing or even the same way twice, a quest that has kept his mission stirring for nearly 60 years.