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ÀÂÀÍÃÀÐÄÍÛÅ ÊÎÍÒÐÀÁÀÑÈÑÒÛ
NNN: Ïðåäëàãàþ ñþäà ñáðàñûâàòü èíôîðìàöèþ îá àâàíãàðäíûõ êîíòðàáàñèñòàõ, à òàêæå îáñóæäàòü ïðîáëåìû â ñîâðåìåííîé ìóçûêå. Çäåñü ìîæíî ïîñëóøàòü: Ñòð. 1 Henry Grimes - Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival 2004 Ñòð.2 MARK DRESSER - BANQUET (1995) WILLIAM PARKER feat. LEENA CONQUEST - Raining on the moon - ñêà÷àòü Ñòð.3 Alan Silva - Alan Silva (äæàçêëóá NoNaMe) Matthew Shipp duo with William Parker - DNA Dave Holland & Barre Phillips "MUSIC FROM TWO BASSES" (1971) Ñòð.4 Joelle Leandre - Solo bass Live at otis, Hiroshima peter kowald with barre phillips Ñòð 5 joelle leandre,danielle roger - tricotage (les tricoteuse) Ñòð. 6 william parker - testimony william parker, hamid drake - piercing the veil anthony braxton & john lindberg - six duets Còð.7 Joelle Leandre, William Parker - Contrabasses joelle leandre - urban bass
NNN: William Parker meets Barbara Toma
NNN: Pomigliano Jazz Festival 2009 - 11 luglio - William Parker Chamber Trio w. Leena Conquest, Eri Yamamoto ft. Famoudou Don Moye
NNN: William Parker cb, Simone Bosco dr, Achille Succi alto sax-cl, Paolo Porta ten. sax
NNN:
NNN: Barre Phillips & David Phillps: Father-son duo bass performed at the Deep Tones for Peace concert on April 26, 2009. The concert took place at two venues simultaneously: The Lab, in Jerusalem, Israel and the Manhattan School of Music in New York. The two venues were linked through a high-speed Internet connection and Polycom equipment. In this duo, Barre is playing in Jerusalem and David in New York. They both see and hear each other with a delay of just over one second. It was part of the challenge and art of this duo to incorporate the delay into the performance. The video shown here was filmed in Jerusalem, showing Barre live and David projected on a large screen behind him.
NNN: Jean Claude Jones
NNN: Hamid Drake / Patricia Nicholson / William Parker June 9th, 2009
NNN: Patricia Nicholson - dance Miriam Parker - dance Mariko Kumanomido - dance Jason Jordan - dance Cooper-Moore - hand-crafted instruments Jason Kao Hwang - violin William Parker - bass
NNN: Interview with William Parker 'Part II' We actually don't know where this interview is from, nor where 'Part 1' is located; I copied it from Marc Minsker's old page on William Parker. Marc, you remember? W: I think eveybody can be as magical as Charlie Parker in their own way. I think everybody is gifted -- they just have to find out what their gift is and develop it. I'm going to condense my answer about composition. I think there is no difference between improvisation and composition. I think improvisation is composition, and not all composition contains improvisation. But all composition can be as strong as improvisation in theory. Part of me really believes that I've got to say that for the record. Part of playing a composition is that you feel good. It's that you've technically been able to play a composition. When you play a complicated score, you just feel good that you've played a complicated score. It sort of fools you into thinking that its something. There is the idea of going past the composition, of saying "well this is on paper" and go past that into putting yourself into the music. A part of me feels that this is stronger, but I won't say a lot stronger because I haven't experienced playing a written composition every single night. I don't know if it comes to life. I was listening to Andre Watts the other night. He was playing the Moonlight Sonata. He had this look on his face....I can't believe that's all that was there. You have a cultural problem with classical music in the sense that people who listen to it and play it don't seem to be effected by it. Menaing that people who sign bills say "well, we're gonna reinstate the death penalty. OK, goodbye. I'm going to the ballet, to the opera to listen to classical music." They say, "We're gonna start a war," and then they go and listen (clap, clap). Then they just go home. It doesn't affect them in any way because they look at it as if they spent forty million dollars for a painting and they think they deserve it. They think that's what they're supposed to listen to. So in a sense, classical music has been taken away from the people. It's put in halls. It's put in museums. It's put in this ellitist position. So, its very much less effective. What if Andre Watts was playing in something comfortable. Suppose he wanted to change a note in the composition. There are all these stigmas that it's really not supposed to do anything. It's just supposed to be the way a lot of people approach art&emdash;as a museum piece. I think that if everybody in America began to think and began to listen to all kinds of music, they would say, "Wait a minute...you guys have all the money. Get out of there. We have to change things." I think that's basically the underpending reason why everything is the way it is. But any way... S: How do you see the music you play in regards to how it affects your surroundings socially? W: I think all art, when people experience it deep in their heart, changes and brings out the beauty inside people. it awakes them, or disturbs them. It gets them to think, to read poetry or listen to more music. I think its very positive--any kind, not just my music. Any kind of art is very stimulating to people if they let it. Lots of times people put up barriers. If people let it seep in, I think its very effective. S: Do you have anything to say about what its like for you to live this life and how society responds to your music? W: Well, its very difficult to be a musician in the underground because you don't get that much support. Personally I've been very lucky to be able to make a living playing this music. Of course, for every person that can make a living there are fifty that don't. I always hope underneath that more and more musicians can play and get their music heard, and don't go crazy and don't bug out. A lot of people start off but they don't make it till the end. Its very difficult and I guess if I had to do it over again, I'd do it again. There's a great sense of freedom and joy after a concert, during a concert, or when you get to travel and your coming home from a gig. Its great, and I can't think of anything better to do with one's life than to be involved in this. I'm very happy and privileged to do this music and meet wonderful people. S: What changes do you see in your music since you began? W: Sound wise? W: Well, last night I was playing and I developed a new fingering technique, which I have never used before. I can remember in 1974 or so, I was playing at this venue called Environ, which was run by John Fischer. In the first years that I was playing, I was trying to figure out a way to play within the history that had been laid out for me. Iim basically a traditional type bass player in the sense that what lies underneath what I do is like Wellman Brawn, Walter Page, and Wilbur Ware. That is a walk pulse which comes very natural to me. There are things that came very natural to me when I started playing the bass: the walk pulse, a tone, and the bow. Usually when you pick up an instrument, there's something you can naturally do on it. What I could do is I could walkon it, and I could bow. In 1973, I remember there was a break-through in the way I was playing. I was able to get a horizontal and vertical motion at the same time. Meaning that horizontally, you are bowing and vertically you're fingering. To me this was a break through because I was able to use a continuous flow of playing with the left and right. A lot of people who don't know think that if you've played with Ccecil Taylor, that's how your music developed. When I started playing with Cecil (I first played with him 1973) regularly in 1980, I had developed all of what I was doing. It just happened to coincide with what he was doing and what other things were happening. The more I played, the more extended techniques developed on the instrument. S: Can you talk about that a little bit? W: The idea of horizontal and vertical continuum or flow. The idea of the drone. I used to always practice one note. That's all I used to ever practice, one note all day. The idea of visualization. The idea of lakes of light, of cathedrals of light, of looking at the string as light. I developed a visualization concept that the string is a band of light. I didn't read this anywhere, I may have invented the idea. (I better patent this). The string is a band of light; the bow is a prism. When you put light--white light--through a prism, you get color. And that was the sound, that was the harmonics. These are the things that I love. The harmonics and the sound. I was never interested in the notes. I was only interested in the sound, the color, and the shapes of the colors. Then somehow I ran into the concept of healing and music. Then trying to relate cetain sounds to certain ideas, and then projecting them out as I was playing to the audience. But this concept stagnated and fizzled out for now. It was too mental. So there was color, sound, healing. Then that developed into a no-note concept. You are not playing any notes on the bass. This is where the idea of the trap drum set came in--looking at the bass as a trap drum set. The G string is the ride cymbal: that's your pulse, that's your drone, that's your tamboura. I'm always playing in the key of G, I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. E, now that's your gong and your bass drum. The D string is your snare. The A string is your low tomtom and also can act as your additional cymbals. So that was the visualization, and then another concept was added. This concept was a cora: playing with no stops. I didn't even know about the cora till somebody gave me a record. You are playing a total sound concept, just sound; tones are there, notes maybe there, but your not thinking in terms of Bb, Eb, etc. Then came another concept to get sound out of the bass. We had a loft on Waverly Place in the 70s, below Waverly Theater. Daniel Carter, Billy Bang, Earl Freeman, a drummer named Roger Baird, Dewey Johnson and myself. We played there all day long, and at night we'd go to Sam Rivers' place and play there and hang out. If you play seven or eight hours a day, it just comes about. You say, "I've been playing the same thing every doggone day." So then you play something different. Then you play that for a week and then you play something else different, and all of a sudden somebody else comes in and you develop a concept. Now whats happening is that a new technique or new sound just comes up. Its not like someone sits at home trying to find out new ways to do something different. They just come to you. http://www.aumfidelity.com/interviewpt2wp.htm
NNN: William Parker, Simone Bosco, Achille Succi, Paolo Porta
NNN: A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH WILLIAM PARKER (April 3, 2003) William Parker is the best bassist of my time. Whether or not people coming to terms with hard bop having ended with the Alfred Lion Blue Note days learn to appreciate Parker is not a question of if, but when. Parker's uncanny ability to make saxophonists that play alongside him better is akin to Jimmy Garrison and Henry Grimes. The latter, a lesson in the often, cruel neglectfulness of the times we live in, a bed we have made and one I lament daily. Parker, however, is in pursuit of a reverent spirituality, a catholic respect. Sounds familiar to John Coltrane devotees. But that is the grace of William Parker, unedited and in his own words. FRED JUNG: We live in tenuous times when anxieties are understandably high. John Coltrane's spirituality has great relevance. WILLIAM PARKER: I think it is very pertinent. I think if people had adopted and followed spiritual paths, we wouldn't be in such turmoil today. The world would be quite different. We would have a different perceptive on things. We would live different. We would look into each other's eyes and see a different vision. I think it was very important from the Sixties until now to lead a spiritual path because certain people led paths. They stayed out of the political agenda, hoping that things would balance out, but we left America in the hands of people who didn't listen to John Coltrane. Whereas, the people who did listen to John Coltrane were not interested in running for public office or becoming involved in the political arena. FJ: Are musicians more spiritual than the average bear? WP: The term "spiritual" or "spirituality" is a wide and broad subject. There is one idea that the guys on Wall Street, during lunch hour, would meditate on their moneybags. If you follow the trail, you see that the sneaker company, their sneakers are made by people in Vietnam or Cambodia and they are getting paid five cents an hour and they are selling the sneakers for three hundred dollars a pair. At lunchtime, they go jogging or they mediate and on Sundays, they go to a prayer service and when they are interviewed, they say that they are spiritual. What does that mean? Does that mean you believe in God when you want to and the rest of the time, you do what you want to do? Personally, I would say that artists tend to be closer to nature and closer to the creative part of the earth's vibrations and tend to think in terms of the betterment of human beings. For me, the most important part of spirituality is not what you do, whether you are a mailman, a doctor, a lawyer, or a musician. It is how you live your life and what you do everyday. That is the real test of your spirituality. FJ: One of the many things I lament is four days before my scheduled with Peter Kowald, he passed. You had a close association with Kowald. WP: Right, I met Peter Kowald around 1980 in New York. Peter was very, very, very personable. He would met musicians and non-musicians and talk and communicate and exchange numbers. If you were a musician, he would say, "Let's play together." If you were not a musician, he would say, "Come to my concert. Here is a CD." That was one level of him. He gave to people. He gave a lot of his energy. He set up tours for people. He would give instruments to people. However he could help a person, he would help them. Peter never spoke about spirituality. He just did things. As a musician, he was constantly working, constantly trying to play and develop his music. He was one force of perpetual motion. I can't even begin to name the things that he did throughout his career. FJ: The Die Like a Dog Trio recently released a CD on Eremite dedicated to Kowald, Never Too Late But Always Too Early. WP: Yeah, the project came out of a tour we did two years ago. We did a tour of the United States with the Die Like a Dog Trio: Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, and myself. The music came out of the first concert of the tour, which was Montreal. FJ: It has come to my attention that the bass Henry Grimes is using was given to him by one William Parker. WP: I received an email that Henry Grimes was not dead, that he was found, and he was living in LA, and that he showed interest in getting back to playing. I didn't respond at first because I thought there was lots of bass players in LA and it would probably be easier for him to get a bass in LA, which I think he would have eventually gotten if I wouldn't have sent that bass. Someone in LA would have eventually gotten him a bass somehow. I think a bass needs to be played. When an instrument is just sitting around and not being played, it just sort of dies and then the more you play it, the better it sounds because the wood begins to vibrate and the molecules begin to spread. Instruments need to be played. They really don't need to be lying around dormant. FJ: And you named the bass? WP: When I got the bass, it was a regular colored bass. I stripped the bass and I refinished it in a green color, an olive green finish and I called it Olive Oil. FJ: Tell me about the Raining on the Moon project. WP: I guess since the Seventies, I have always written music and written words with the music. It wasn't until the Nineties that I began to really do CDs and recording the music that I have been working on. The Raining on the Moon project came out of an extension of a record I put out called O'Neal's Porch, which was a quartet record that did very well. It was an independent record produced on Centering. It is the same O'Neal's Porch quartet plus the vocalist Leena Conquest. I have written all of the material and the lyrics. It's sort of a different sound. It has folk elements. It's an album where the rhythmical aspects and melodic aspects are separated from the color spectrum of sound. It is not as dense. It is more accessible to people. FJ: And the latest project with your Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, Raincoat in the River? WP: That was taken from a concert we did. We did two nights, one in Amherst and one in Boston, Massachusetts. We tapped into some different areas. The idea for the piece comes from two sources. One, it is dedicated to saxophone player Marvin Nunez, who was a saxophone player, who always dealt in sub-tone music, music that was very soft and very quiet when he played. You could hardly hear what he was doing when he played. There was that idea, in exploring sub-tones, which I use a shakuhachi and a cello. And then the other part of it was the childhood idea of guns into trumpets. When I was a child, we would get these Mattel guns for Christmas, but me and my brother would always turn the guns around and blow into them like they were trumpets. We would always play jam sessions. We would never play cowboys and Indians. Those are the two parts that this comes from and there is also a part dedicated to Marion Brown, who lives in a senior citizen's home, up in the Bronx. I visit Marion from time to time. He is actually another person that would be nice to get back on the music scene. FJ: Age, physical or financial ailments, musicians never retire. WP: Oh, yeah, I think everybody that is involved with something they love in life, they don't ever want to stop doing it. Retirement really equals death when you are a musician. You really want to play until you can't play anymore or be creative in some kind of way. If you can't physically play, you write. You do something involved in music because that is what you have done all your life. FJ: And lastly, your recording with Joe Morris and Hamid Drake, Eloping with the Sun. WP: I have been playing this instrument called the zintir. It is a bass from Morocco. I have been playing that the last three or four years. There is actually a track on Raincoat in the River that wasn't released. Maybe that will be released later. Joe was dealing with the banjo and Hamid is a very, very good frame drum player. I had played duets with Joe and duets with Hamid, so we just sort of just blended this concept together and recorded that music that afternoon. That project has great potential to grow into something much bigger than what we just released. Its growth potential is great. FJ: Is the Vision Festival still without corporate funding? WP: Yes, it is definitely without corporate funding. Until you can find a corporation that doesn't want to control the festival because corporations tend to want to change the Vision Festival into the Texaco Festival or the Heineken Festival or the Verizon Festival. That just changes the whole nature of what you are trying to do. If you are going to get corporate money, you want clean money, if that is possible. You also want money that doesn't change the nature of the festival. It is not about advertising. FJ: What is your outlook for the festival? WP: My wife, Patricia, really started the festival. The festival was started as an outgrowth of the Improvisers Collective, which was a group of improvisers, dancers, and poets who would get together and we would do concerts every week. One thing about the Vision Festival is that it is multimedia. It has dance. It has music. It has poetry, which is a little different than most jazz festivals. It has a theme. Every year, it has a political theme or idea about a vision, how you would like the see the world change. It opens every year with an invocation by Joseph Jarman, who is a Buddhist monk. FJ: I am a selfish man and want to see something like that on the left coast. WP: It hasn't gotten that much heavy duty publicity, but the festival last year was three weeks, which is very, very long for a festival. Before that, it was two weeks and this year, it is a week. You have people from all over the world coming because it fills a void. In New York now, there is no other. The Knitting Factory doesn't have a festival anymore. There is really no festival like it. The word just spread. You hear people that you won't hear at any festival. This year, singer Patty Waters is singing and she hasn't sung in New York in thirty years. You also hear people like Fred Anderson from Chicago. He comes here once a year to play and he plays at the Vision Festival. Kidd Jordan from New Orleans comes. We have had Bill Dixon. We have had orchestra pieces, small group pieces. We've had dance and music collaborations. We have had painters and sculptures and it has grown and is now established. Every year, people look forward to it. FJ: Can I let the cat out of the bag and break that Grimes may be there this year? WP: Yeah, we don't have a definite, definite on that, but we are working on that. That is all I can say about that just yet. FJ: What do you foresee the theme of the festival will be this year? WP: Last year, it was "Vision against violence." The theme this year is "avant-jazz peace." It is a extension from last year and it is a statement for world peace. I think it would have been a very nice accomplishment that when we reached the year 2000, for human beings to have world peace. That would have been a really big, nice celebration. But we reached the year 2000 and I really didn't see anything to celebrate because we hadn't accomplished that much. We had computers and we have cell phones, but we are still killing each other. They have to resolve that and then get cell phones. FJ: And the future? WP: Little Huey has a new record coming out on Splasc(h) Records called Spontaneous, which will be out in May. We don't work as much as we used to because I have been on the road, but I am trying to pick that up. I have a record called Scrapbook. That will be a violin trio record with myself on bass, Billy Bang, violin, and Hamid Drake on drums. It will be out on Thirsty Ear and that will be out in June. We are planning a tour in November. We are going to San Francisco and maybe we can get to LA. I will put in a bid. http://www.aumfidelity.com/soundboardwp.htm
NNN: WILLIAM PARKER With the release this month of his spectacular new album Sound Unity (Aum Fidelity) bassist William Parker proves why he's one of America's top jazz players. Recorded live in Vancouver and Montreal, Parker is accompanied by Hamid Drake (drums), Rob Brown (alto sax) and Lewis Barnes (trumpet). In celebration of this release, we're offering an extensive excerpt of Parker's interview with Stop Smiling from Issue 16: The End of the New York Hype. Here, Parker discusses his refusal to fight in Viet Nam, the influence of Ornette Coleman and Modern art on his life and music, and how Beatlemania destoryed jazz. Interview by JC Gabel Stop Smiling: Where did you grow up? William Parker: I basically grew up in the projects up in the Bronx. I followed the program that was set out for us, which was to go to schools that were not very good and to eventually either drop out or end up getting a civil service job. At an early age, my father had different plans for us, me and my brother. He was sort of grooming us to play in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. So I guess when I was 10 years old, I got my first musical instrument, which was a trumpet. When I was 12 or 13, I got a trombone, and then I switched to cello. When I was 18, I decided to switch to string bass. Through listening to my father's records at the time, I got an introduction to music that, through osmosis, was really seeping into me. It later blossomed in a serious way. If it were not for that, I probably would have led a more or less routine life. Through music, I got interested in poetry and writing and plays and the civil rights movement and American history. All of those things helped shape my awareness of the environment I was living in, which again was an environment not really conducive to succeeding. Our role was to play basketball and then – at that time, I could have gone to Viet Nam, but again I decided to be a conscientious objector. I had a trial and they asked me two questions. “Do you want to go to Viet Nam?” I said, “No,” and then they said, “Why don't you want to go to Viet Nam?” I said, “Because I don't believe in killing people.” Actually, they asked me three questions. The third question was, “Are you afraid to die?” And I said, “No.” Then, a week after that, I got a letter in the mail. I was accepted as a conscientious objector and I didn't go into the Army. And I was very lucky because I wouldn't have fit in. A lot of people signed up and they thought it was an alternative to high school or college… to join the Army, but a lot of people didn't come back or they came back really out of it because of that. SS: Were your folks jazz aficionados? WP: No. Just my father was really into jazz. My mother was into gospel music. My father was into Duke Ellington. There's a slight similarity between my father and Duke Ellington. He based a lot of the way he dressed off of the Ellington band. He was into Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins records. What happened was – that was when stereo records were just coming into play, so the monaural records were so cheap. You could get them for, like, 99 cents, 79 cents, and you'd get stereo records for $3.49, which was the regular price at that time. He'd send us down to the store every Saturday and say, “Get me two [records] and get your self something.” At that time, we'd look for Duke Ellington or Ben Webster, but then we saw all these records on Atlantic Records, by, like, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, and we had no idea what this music sounded like, but we really dug the covers. They were different. The thing about the neighborhood was that you just didn't want to get Converse All Stars. You had to have a certain sneaker. You had to have a certain pair of dungarees. You had to have a leather coat, but there was a point where the more I got into the music – that stuff was not important. What was important was to be different. We saw this record, you know, Ornette Coleman, this is a strange looking guy: This Is Our Music. We started buying these records and listening to them and that was some very hip stuff. Nobody told us, “Well, it's avant-garde.” Or, “It's free and you're not supposed to like it.” We just put it on and began to listen to it. SS: So, aesthetically, at first, the records drew you in? WP: Well, you know with [the breakthrough Ornette Coleman record] Free Jazz you had a Jackson Pollack painting on the cover – I'm not sure the name of it [“White Light”]. That was my introduction into Modern art. I had studied a little bit of art on my own, but seeing these paintings, I started looking. Who is this guy Jackson Pollack? Then I began to investigate Modern art. It was all connected with the music – the poetry, the films. At the time, I was very interested in the films, which was called independent cinema at the time. People like Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, and Bruce Bailey. It was just a very fruitful period of learning and doing cross exchanges with the different disciplines. SS: It all shaped your worldview then? As far as what your tastes are and what your into? WP: Oh yeah, definitely. You'd listen to John Coltrane and John Coltrane would talk about the Baghavad-Gita, so you'd go out and buy the Baghavad-Gita. You wanted to see, “What did John Coltrane read? What kind of food did he eat? What influenced Ornette Coleman to get these sounds? What kind of poetry did Cecil Taylor listen to?” Because what influenced them would give you some sort of insight on what their aesthetic was. Then I got to the point where I thought I could make a contribution to this type of music. So you stop listening, and you go forth and you start playing. There was a period where I had to stop listening so much and just play. Where was my voice in this realm of sound? SS: What is the status of the New York loft scene for jazz musicians? WP: Long gone. You had the theatre-artist program. You would be hired 9-to-5 to play as a musician. It was a theater company called the Theatre of the Forgotten. We would play in prisons, we used to play music for senior citizens homes, and we would write music for the shows, plays, and we'd work with puppets. I learned how to work in many disciplines during the Carter presidency. Then Ronald Reagan got in office and all the funding stopped. Basically, since then, it's been dog-eat-dog here in New York. Also at that time, we had fewer musical styles. You used to be able to go into any record store: you'd have rock, jazz, classical, blues, early R&B, and folk music, and that was about it. Now you go into a record store and there are so many different categories of music. And there are new categories that are being thought up all the time; I can't even keep up with it. I'm really a reclusive type of person. I think there were two points that took acoustical jazz for a loop. One was, of course, the Beatles. Your post-Beatle period is very different than your pre-Beatle period. The Beatles were just the beginning of the “rock industry,” where you generate billions of dollars through rock stars. It just went on from there. You see it in music stores. Pre-Beatles, you could walk into a music store and buy a stand-up bass; post-Beatles, all you had were electric guitars. Beatle dolls. Beatle suits. Beatle everything: a Saturday morning Beatle cartoon show. [The record companies were thinking,] if I can make millions of dollars selling rock records, why should I sell jazz, where we might only make a small amount of money? Miles Davis [for instance], saved Columbia Records several times with hits. But you know that rock music eclipsed everything. Then you had MTV, the second point, where not only could you now hear the music, you could look at the videos. [Henceforth,] the lack of choice started to seep in all around our society, meaning our choices wee diminished as to what we could chose to listen to. You can witness this by driving around in America today. You listen to the radio now and you don't hear anything connected to what I do. When I turn the TV on, I don't hear anything connected with what I do. SS: That could that be because five companies now own everything. WP: [laughs] So it's not even like people think your music doesn't sell. We don't know how many could have sold. How many people have actually heard what we do? We've never had equal opportunity to reach the public. Like, every Kenny G record they play, if they played just as many Matthew Shipp records, maybe his sales would go up. But, again, it's an unfair playing field where [the record companies] don't even want to invest the time with us, because there are spiritual and political undertones that come with this music. It's just not candy in a sense. It makes you think. A lot of it makes you think. But they would rather not have people think, because somewhere down the line they know someone is being bamboozled… http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=338
NNN: BC: Can you tell me the first record or poem or film that you remember that started you thinking about taking up this art form of creative music as a profession? WP: Well, I guess several things...I remember listening to the MJQ [Modern Jazz Quartet] and some recordings they did on Atlantic and listening to the things that Percy Heath was doing that were placed differently than walking bass lines. He was playing some bass parts that stood out in that particular ensemble. Then of course, later on I listened to the music of John Coltrane...Ornette Coleman...and Albert Ayler. But maybe one of the initial romantic ideas of playing music came from when I was a kid...I used to watch a movie by Francois Truffaut called Shoot The Piano Player, and there is a short scene where a bass player is carrying his bass out of the club. I remember as a kid watching that and that sort of caught my early on. Also I listened quite a bit to the bassist John Lamb, who used to play with Duke Ellington's band, and he impressed me a lot also. I also enjoyed the work of George Duvivier. BC: How did you arrive at the bass as your primary instrument? I read somewhere that you started with the trumpet. WP: At an early age, when I was eight or nine, my father got me a trumpet and we did mail-order lessons - you pay a dollar a week and you get a lesson in the mail. It was a whole trumpet study course, so he got me that. But I wasn't seriously interested in it at that time, and later on I switched from trumpet to trombone, then trombone to cello. And when I was in junior high school, I remember beginning to be attracted to the low sounds and to the bass - they had one bass in the ensemble, and I was playing the cello. I sort of made up my mind at that time that I would probably end up playing the bass. And then layers of things began to happen...listening to music, like the music I just spoke about, and eventually just making that decision. BC: Can you speak about early influences in other art forms. For example, I read that you studied poetry and film as well...you cited Patchen, Maya Deren, and Stan Brakhage, who are filmmakers I have recently been studying...it seems you were taking in these experimental filmmakers and artists at an early age...did they inspire you to think about music in like terms? WP: Well...you begin to put the things you read and study at the time into context. During high school, I was studying the music itself just by listening; I was studying and reading the poetry of Kenneth Patchen. And what I was learning is that art had an effect on people, particularly myself. I was beginning to make sense out of life. You know, when you're young and growing up, one of the hardest things to do is make sense out of life...what are you going to do, who are you going to be, all of these things become difficult tasks that young people have to confront by experimenting and trying different things. Things just suddenly began to make sense for me. I was studying some religious books at the time, Bhagavad Gita, the compassionate teachings of Buddha, and things just finally started to solidify in my sort of acknowledging that art or music was one of the keys for me to put my life together, and also to project out onto the world. BC: You studied early on with a number of bassists, including Richard Davis and Jimmy Garrison. Can you talk about what you remember most about these lessons. Were the lessons in the form of formal sit-down lessons, or more in the form of informal conversations about experiences... WP: Well my first bass teacher was actually Paul West, the bassist with Dizzy Gillespie, and then I studied with Richard Davis, and then Milt Hinton, and then Arthur Davis, up at the Jazzmobile School. And then I studied privately with Jimmy Garrison and later on with Wilbur Ware. Each professional musician, when they teach...they have a different approach according to what they've been taught and where they're coming from, and what they would like to sort of have you remember or learn from them. Richard Davis, for example, was very much of a professional. He played all kinds of music. He was very creative in the jazz domain, but he also played classical and R&B and folk music and Latin music. And his approach was to learn the bass from top to bottom and try to play as many kinds of music as you can, the idea being the more things you can play, not only could you make a living, but it would also enhance your music. And there was really nothing to fear as far as style. Milt Hinton was talking about projection and simplicity. He would tell me to play a blues in C, just play the note C. Just play one note. And just play the tonic and work on playing one note before you go to another note. And Art Davis was talking about using cello techniques on the bass. On the bass, on your left hand, you use the first, second, and then the third and fourth fingers to put down together. And Art developed a technique much like the cello where you use your third and fourth fingers separately to hit different notes...he was talking about that kind of arco and fingering techniques. Now Jimmy Garrison wasn't particularly interested in playing all kinds of music...not that he could or couldn't do these things, but he was interested in doing what he was doing. So with him, we spent time on the bass, but he also told me about the music business a little bit. And Wilbur Ware would just sort of play things and then hand the bass back to me, and I would play things. So everyone had a different approach. You learn by what they're actually telling you, but you also learn more by just being inspired that they exist, and have reached a level or proficiency and excellence and are striving to really be a human being on a high level. And this gave you something to work at and to strive for. So it was not just teaching, but being a source of inspiration. BC: This music seems to open up the possibilities for new discoveries on the bass by its energy and openness. Do you often discover new techniques in live concert settings and is there a recent revelation you could share with us...do such revelations occur regularly? WP: Well, there are periods where you are discovering things in a sort of serendipitous way, where you don't set out necessarily to find a new sound. But music is like grass, it just wants to be alive...so even when you're not looking for things, things come up. You begin to just place your bow on the string and you turn it a little bit, and a new sound comes out. Or you just sort of bow a certain way or pluck a certain way or move your left hand a certain way, and a different sound comes out, and you being to develop that sound and if you wish, you can add it to your vocabulary. And sometimes you repeat it. Other times, you may play something and never play that sound again. And you try to do it, but it just doesn't come up. So when you're playing music, you give birth to things, things come through you, and sometimes you keep them...and sometimes they never appear again. BC: You started playing with Cecil Taylor early in your career. I remember speaking with Sam Rivers once about playing with Cecil, and he spoke about these marathon sessions with Cecil as necessitating the need to explore other avenues of sound and color, in order to not fall into the same patterns. Is that a constant challenge when you're playing this music, to keep things changing...how do you find ways to continually change and move forward and not fall into the same patterns? WP: You know, you have to think on your feet, while simultaneously not think when you're playing music, meaning that you practice and you train yourself in order to negotiate sounds and rhythms and melodies on your instrument, and to know where to place them. And this is your vocabulary where you're constantly doing split-second composing, alterations of sound, and at the same time your mind and spirit are open and empty to the music flowing through you...it's like a wave. So in a sense, you're not working that hard at it. What you work at is to know how to ride the wave. And once you know how to ride the wave, you can play for hours and hours and hours, and you don't get tired, and you don't really play the same things. I mean, every time you play, it wants to be different. And it's only the same when you try...and this sounds funny, but when you try to make it different sometimes, it ends up being the same. So you have to be in the moment, and that's very hard for musicians to do because musicians are trained to control the music, and what you want to do is not control the music, you want to surrender to the music. And at the same time, you want to be able to guide it, but you want it to guide you simultaneously, and that's kind of hard to do, because it's against a lot of the music school principles, where you have to be in control of it every second. I think the music is bigger than us, so we just want to flow with it. And once you get in the flow, you really don't have to worry about playing the same things, and the deeper you go, and the more you play, the more things you'll find to play. It's just an endless, endless stream of colors and shapes and sounds that the music can formulate...it's like raindrops and snowflakes...just an infinite number of possibilities. BC: How often do you feel outside of yourself when you're playing, where you're just a channel, and does this vary with all the contexts you play in? WP: Well, there are all kinds of musics, and things that people are doing. If you play trance music, and trance / cosmic music - cosmic music going into trance, then that's a particular area of the music. Charlie Parker got into that area. Everyone gets into this area because it's an area where the music finds itself going, which is when the music is happening, there's this trance happening. And you really want to get that happening every time you play. Of course every group has a different sensibility. Like Milt Jackson and Art Farmer, if you listen to these guys improvise...Milt Jackson could just play chorus after chorus after chorus, and connect the phrases off of any tune, and that was a kind of trance, that was a kind of connection. And Art Farmer could do the same thing with ballads. But it was in a certain area; they painted with certain colors. A musician like Bill Dixon - he paints with another shade and hues of colors, and he has a certain energy that's put in the music. But it all can live in the same area of life as any great music. Any great music is on the same level as any other great music; it just manifests itself in different ways. So for a master musician, the idea is that every time you play something magical happens. And you can hear that with certain musicians -- they play one note, and it's there....there's no warm-up, something's happening already, it begins to bubble. And other musicians they hit a note and there's no buoyancy, it doesn't have the same vibrational quality. And that's what you're training for, to try to consistently have this lifeforce in your music every time you play. Whether you're playing long form for two hours intensely, or whether you're playing a ballad for two minutes, or thirty seconds, you need that same energy. Because if someone only has thirty seconds to listen, you've got to have that energy for thirty seconds. And regardless of style or form in the music, it's the underlying spirit and vibration that really makes it happen. BC: You mentioned that you had performed at Studio Rivbea, performed with Cecil Taylor and his orchestra at Carnegie Hall. What was the scene like during this so-called "loft scene" era, and does it parallel in any way with what's going on today in New York? WP: Well, in the early 70s, you had a lot of musicians coming to New York. New York has got a particular energy already, because you have so much happening. But around that time, you had musicians coming in from Chicago, St Louis, Los Angeles, and they were all coming to New York ready and wanting to play. So people were finding storefronts, lofts, and creating and producing their own concerts because the established clubs were not that receptive to hiring them. So you had all of these musicians who instead of staying at home, came out and created work for themselves, performing and recording their music. So it was very lively at that time. And there was a lot of energy in the air...it was a nice fever-pitch happening. Rashied Ali had a club, Ornette Coleman had a place, Sam Rivers had a place, Joe Lee Wilson had a place, there was Studio We run by James Dubois and Juma Sultan, and then John Fischer had a place...so you've got six to ten places that are run by musicians where musicians can play. Which is a big difference from what's happening now. Mind you, the real estate is way up now, but in those times musicians were running their own places...at Rashied Ali's, you could play for a whole week! BC: Wow, I didn't realize there were that many places... WP: Oh yeah. And there were even more under the surface, some that were really small. There was Sunrise Studios on 2nd Avenue, there was a place called Inroads on Mercer Street. I pulled out a book of old flyers and there was some place where you could rent the St Marks Church for twenty-five dollars! So that was the big difference for me, was that musicians were not so much going to Europe during that time, but staying here and trying to play and develop the scene. BC: I read that you met David S Ware on a Cecil Taylor orchestra performance at Carnegie Hall in the early 70s. When did the David S Ware Quartet start coalescing? WP: Well, I met David Ware I guess in 1972 or '73, because when I played with Cecil Taylor in '74 at Carnegie Hall, David was in the band. And in '73 David had a band called Apogee with Cooper Moore and Marc Edwards, and they rehearsed at 501 Canal Street. So I met him then. And then we did some things in the 80s with Marc Edwards and Cooper Moore, who at that time was known as Gene Ashton. And I think David stopped playing for a bit, after we had done a trio with Denis Charles -- which was my project, and then after that, he came out again and we started rehearsing as a trio around '85 or '86. I think Matthew joined the band in '86, so the band has been together about sixteen or seventeen years, with the core being David, Matthew, and me. So outside of Other Dimensions in Music and bands with Daniel Carter, who I've played with since '72, this band has had quite a bit of longevity. And it keeps growing and changing and still remains very vital and interesting music that we're doing. BC: Regarding your compilation Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace...was the original intention to take isolated recording dates from the 70s and put them together on an album for release, or was this decision to compile these sessions onto one album something that happened more recently? WP: Well, at that time I had done a session at WKCR radio, which was the initial session for the recording. I think we only used one track from that record, Rattles and Bells and the Light of the Sun, but there is maybe another hour of music from that session that I'd like to put out at some point. But I didn't really decide to put the record out until a few years after that, so I wanted it to have different selections from different kinds of music I was doing during that time. So initially it was four tracks, and on the CD reissue we added the string piece with Tristan Honsinger, William Connell, Jason Hwang, and Polly Bradfield. BC: Frank Lowe's Black Beings with Joseph Jarman is one of those landmark records in free music, and this was one of your first recordings. How did you meet Frank Lowe and how did the recording date come about? WP: Well, I had been going down to Studio Rivbea. I think I first started playing down there with Jemeel Moondoc. And a lot of the musicians lived on the Lower East Side on 11th Street between B and C. I used to rehearse with a group called The Juice Quartet down the block on 11th Street, where Wilbur Ware lived and Charles Brackeen lived around the corner. Andrew Hill lived down the block, and Rashied Sinan lived in the neighborhood. So you saw a lot of musicians down there and you just meet people. I think I saw Frank down at Studio Rivbea playing with Sunny Murray and Bill Lewis, and we spoke and I'm not really sure how it came about, but he asked me to do this concert with him with Joseph Jarman at Ornette Coleman's loft, The Artists House. So that record was recorded at 131 Prince Street and was a two-day concert. There's quite a lot more material from that date with Rashied Sinan, Raymond Lee Cheng playing violin, Joseph Jarman, and Frank Lowe. BC: You also played with Don Cherry during this timeframe? WP: Yes, I played with Don at the Five Spot in a group with Frank Lowe, Hakim Jamil, Roger Blank, Denis Charles, Ed Blackwell, and Billy Higgins, and we played for a week. It was during the period of the Brown Rice record...we played some of the music off of that record. There is a tape of that week we did at the Five Spot, which was played on the radio, which I'd like to get a copy of at some point. BC: I was listening to the solo record Lifting the Sanctions last night, and you can hear the bass being used as a percussive instrument. And in the liner notes, you list something like fourteen different techniques: four basic techniques and then ten arc techniques on top of that. Do you find yourself often moving into more of a percussive role when you're improvising, and do you still use these techniques you described? WP: Well, I think now I'm just more concerned with the music. At that particular stage of my development, I was really in some musics relating the bass to a drum set, particularly when I played pizzicato, and I still do that, but now I'm not really thinking about it. That's just a sub-thought. So now I don't really think about technique, I just combine all of the techniques together in whatever the music needs. So you might hear me playing in a particular group and I might incorporate some percussive things and then also use certain fingering patterns, but it's all sort of used as I need it as a means to an end. So I'm not really thinking about technique. Technique is now, for me, is not really important. What's more important to me now is just playing the music. I think people get hung up too much on "extended technique". Meaning if you're a human being, an extended technique might be helping a poor person, but that shouldn't be an extended technique, that should be part of your life! And it's the same way with music. To me, what we call extended technique is what India would call normal technique. What we call microtonal music is in Africa just regular music they play all the time. It's all perspective, you see. So I think extended technique is essentially meaningless to me at this point. Whatever you use to make a sound is what you use...so we don't want to get too hung up on technique. BC: You certainly hear a lot about "extended technique" these days... WP: Yeah, like growing up in the projects, or growing up wherever you grow up as a kid, you listen to all kinds of music. I mean, the electric bassist James Jameson, he had to do a certain thing on the electric to get that sound and to play those rhythms. Ron Carter, when he was playing with Miles Davis, had to do certain things to make the sound that he was getting. And Reggie Workman has to do certain things to make the sound he gets. And so you have this huge well of things you listen to and draw from, and different musics call for different ideas of methods to play the bass. It's all accessible to you, and there's nothing weird about it...there's nothing extended, it's just sound. BC: I want to get your thoughts on where the music has come since the work of Donald and Albert Ayler, who called his music "freely spiritual music". Donald Ayler once described what he called "listening aids", where he said, "You have to relate sound to sound inside it. You have to try to listen to everything together, follow the sound, the pitches, the colors, you have to watch them move. Do you feel your music stems from Ayler's contributions, and if so, can you expand on how these comments about how to listen to this music based on where you and your peers have taken us since? WP: I would say that the musicians who I have played with and the music that we've developed over the last twenty-five or thirty years, deals with in one way group improvisation, and that is having not just one person soloing, but have four people play together and not really have a soloist. Now this isn't new, this is something in the Baka or Pygmy Music, where you have four different parts going simultaneously. Our contribution to it, I think, is the fact that when you play together for twenty years, like Other Dimensions In Music, we're able to shift rhythms from cells of sound every second or every minute and constantly spontaneously shift and interact on these rhythms, go back to them, feed off them, and also have a group sound. And in the ensemble MUNTU the work I was doing with drummer Rashid Bakr was to be able to navigate, to keep the music afloat by shifting, by pushing and pulling, by constantly varying the colors and rhythms. And doing all of this very, very, very, very fast...all of the time. And so in a sense it's hard for people to catch. Critics who sometimes review this music don't really get exactly what we're doing because it just kind of goes past...they don't really see it. Also there's the idea of how the rhythms sort of circle around themselves off of the pulse of the human beings, and then we sort of sing together, then come out, swell up, then speed up, then slow down, have fast against slow, slow against fast, have all of these meters happening. And this is not pre-composed, this is spontaneously done in that particular group. In the group MUNTU, we explored these things but we had some preset themes, but in the improvisations, you're constantly developing the ideas of shifting of rhythm and floating harmonies, where on the bass, every note I hit is a chord change, a harmony. I think Albert Ayler was really...Albert Ayler, you know. And you can't really get next to that. You can't really even attempt to get next to Albert Ayler or John Coltrane, because it's a very personal music. We were definitely inspired by Albert Ayler's cry and his spirituality and his purpose as a musician, but as far as what he was doing sound-wise, I mean I wouldn't even attempt to get very close to that. Just a little insight when I talk about Albert Ayler - when you listen to Albert Ayler on My Name Is Albert Ayler and you listen to Chinese double-reed music, and you hear the way Albert's playing the soprano on "Bye Bye Blackbird" -- not that Albert was listening to that music in particular -- but that's the connection. Albert is bending the notes...it's essentially non-Western music! And if you use a Western criteria, which is what people have been doing, then of course it sounds out, of course it sounds like just screaming or playing out-of-tune, or strange. You know, Kenny Dorham said Albert Ayler's band sounded like the Salvation Army band on LSD... BC: [laughs] WP: ...which is quite a compliment...[laughs], because you say, "Wow, I got to go out and buy that record, because what does that sound like?" But again, if you listen to some of the brass bands in Mexico and India, and you begin to study the music of the world, you find out that Ayler's music was much more connected to the world than it was to jazz. Everyone has their own approach, and that's the wonderful thing about it. And if you think about it, you can break down what everyone's doing. The musicians from the AACM in Chicago, one of the things they did was to add silence...if you listen to the music of bebop, there's no silence. So one of the things they used was the idea of space in their music. They'd use a sound and then a long silence and then have another sound, you see? And just that opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. There were no sounds in Albert Ayler's music, necessarily - he was calling to the spirits, it was a completely different approach. So everyone finds their space in which they can exist and breathe and commune with the spirits. BC: In your music for the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, I hear all sorts of influences, everything from call-and-response to gospel to trance...are these inspirations, and is the orchestra a culmination of these influences? WP: Oh, yeah. I mean, as far as inspiration, every music that I've heard has been an inspiration to me. Everything from Ellington to the Benanzuli Pygmies, call-and-response, the gospel church, rhythm and blues, blues itself, Tibetan music, music from China, music from Japan. And when I say influenced, I don't mean "We're going to strive for a Tibetan sound today", but I mean influences inspire you to seek sound. If you sit on a rock in the desert, you will eventually find that you're playing the same sounds as the people in the Philippines...without ever hearing that music...because all music is in the air, it's universal, and eventually you come upon the same ideas. What you need is, you need a cry...you need a speech-like quality, you need a human quality, you need a conversation. You need a call. You need a response. You need a canvas. So if you have a canvas, you need some yellow. You need some white...well, the canvas is white, so you need some blue. You need some green. So if you just paint white on a white canvas, you don't see any contrast. But you learn if everyone's painting green and you put a little drop of red in the middle, it stands out more than if it was red and you put red in the middle. You see? So if everyone's playing fast, play just one note. If everyone's playing high, play a low note. You see, that's why you say that the best music teacher is an oak tree. These are all natural occurrences in nature! Learning music is a very, very natural process because these things all run into accordance with the way the universe is set up, and the way things are existing out there, in a certain order. And eventually you'll discover them, and the more you get into it, you find your own way of putting it together, because your call-and-response will be different than Ellington's call-and-response. You have to remember that as great as the past masters are, you can't really copy them! BC: It's very true, and it reminds me of something you speak to in your book The Sound Journal, where you talk about pre-shaped forms: "Music is not about pre-shaped molds, it's about the second-by-second discovery of sound." Is this what you mean by pre-shaped forms? Can we not have new sounds based on juxtaposition of the old forms? WP: Well...let's put it this way. Coleman Hawkins plays a B flat...he plays it at 8:00, and then he plays the same note at 8:05, and it's different, it's new, because it's in a different situation and it takes on a different nuance, and it just breathes differently, even though it's the same sound. We don't speak a different language every day, but we *use* the language differently every day. You know, if I see you on Monday and I say "Good morning", then I see you on Tuesday and you say "Good morning", it's the same "Good morning", but...believe me...it's *not* the same. It's a different time, time is always moving. So improvisation doesn't necessarily mean finding new sounds all the time, as much as it means how old sounds *become* new sounds when they come to life. The birth of the sound automatically makes it new. BC: You also write about how "recipe + individuality = song", where a recipe equates to some compositional ideas. Do you believe I can still use an old recipe from say the past masters, and create a new song if I insert my individuality? WP: Oh yeah...because it's DNA! Most people spend quite a bit of time trying to find their sound. Often the best way to find your sound is not to look for it. When you're born, you're different from anybody else that's ever been born. So if I put a horn in your mouth and tell you to blow it, it's going to be different than anyone else that's ever blown a horn. You see, except when you go to music school, they tell you that you're wrong! You see, in our society it's wrong to be you! [laughs] But it's okay to be Charlie Parker. It's okay to copy Charlie Parker but to be you is wrong! BC: Oh...how true...and individuality seems to get lost in the process. I remember when you came to Boston last year with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, you mentioned an ...
NNN: ... upcoming tour with Leena Conquest with this new project inspired by Curtis Mayfield. And it made complete sense to me, because of the obvious cultural relationship and genesis of where this music is coming from. Do you feel there's a underlying, direct connection between your work and the music of Curtis Mayfield, and can you speak to that connection? WP: Well, to me, in the 60s, when the Civil Rights Movement was going on, there was always - at least in my community - there was always a soundtrack. And part of that soundtrack for the events that were going on was the great Black Music, fire music, avant-garde, free music, and the other part of it, largely, was - for me -- the music of Curtis Mayfield...because Curtis Mayfield was very relentless in his consciousness-raising efforts through his music. It's the kind of thing that could slip away from a person, because he had some hits and his music was very melodic. One of his main ideas was uplifting of the spirit and of the people who were living in black neighborhoods. I mean, his music was universal, but a lot of it was geared toward the black community. So I wasn't a heavy-duty listener to his music, but it was resounding and ringing in the background along with this other music. And I had come up with the idea of doing the music of Curtis Mayfield and got invited to do the Banlieues Blues Festival in Paris last year. We performed in two sections with a ninety-piece choir with children and the group featured Dave Burrell, Hamid Drake, Leena Conquest, Darryl Foster, and Lewis Barnes. We had a ninety-piece choir plus a twenty-five piece jimbae ensemble. We did that in two days. The premise of the whole project is called The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, meaning that what we've heard is the outside songs, we've heard what he's done. And that - to me - cannot be improved upon. I mean, you can't outdo Curtis Mayfield doing Curtis Mayfield. And Curtis Mayfield could not outdo the music that we do, the idea being that everyone's got their own music. So the Inside Song is the extension of the ideas in the songs, and that's where Amiri Baraka comes in, so I asked him to extend upon the themes of some of the songs that we were doing. And I've written a bunch of interludes that come after songs that are responses to his song, so in a sense we're doing his music, but his music has also inspired us to come up with different music. BC: Of your other ensembles, your latest is the O'Neal's Porch quartet. Was this ensemble a way to continue working in the small ensemble context after In Order to Survive? WP: In Order To Survive did their last gig at the Guelph Festival in 1999. And so that was sort of put on hold, so I started the O'Neal's Porch Quartet. We had done a couple of dance performances actually playing the music we recorded and I liked it quite a bit. I knew Hamid was coming into town and we recorded that record and since then, we've done another record called Raining on the Moon which is the quartet plus the vocalist Leena Conquest. That will be out I think in May. So the area I'm looking at going into in the future seems to be vocal music and also the kind of music Hamid [Drake] and I did on the latest duo record. I would like to do that kind of music with a quartet or even a larger ensemble, where I'm playing other instruments outside of the bass. I've been working on the guimbri (the Moroccan bass), and I've been playing the Dozon n'goni from Mali, and I've been working on double reeds for the last couple of months. I mean I've always played these instruments - I started playing on double reeds in 1972. But now I'm really getting more and more into playing them on a daily basis, and really working at them to bring them out more, and to incorporate the sounds of those instruments and elements of meditation, prayer, and the trance musics into the trumpet/alto music we use in the quartet with the vocals. Then I have another outlet, which is the clarinet trio with Perry [Robinson] and Walter Perkins, because that's an entirely different thing. There I'm just basically playing the bass and we're doing compositions that are very open-ended and free and that have to do with the particular way that each of those guys play. A lot of people say it's more connected with traditional jazz than my other ensembles, but again, I'm not really concerned with what it's connected with or the style. I just like playing in that setting where you can go anywhere. In the clarinet trio, I can play a waltz, I can play a samba, I can play fast 4/4, I can play no time, it can go anywhere it goes. And that's really great. The idea of free music is that you're free to play anything you wish to play. And there aren't many musics where you can play almost anything you want to play at any time. I mean, if you're playing in a polka band, you're playing polkas all the time. You can't just stop and play something else! BC: [laughs] WP: [laughs] ...you know, if you're playing in a meringue band, you're playing meringues. Everything has a form. If you're playing in a bebop band, you're playing bebop. But in bands like the clarinet trio, we can play meringues, polkas, bebop...anything we want! And that's the beauty of it. So all of these groups cover different areas or interests of music that I like to see come out. BC: Your collaboration with drummer Hamid Drake has developed into one of the most powerful rhythm sections of our time, and the "Piercing the Veil" record documented your duet work with Hamid. The group Organic Grooves recently used this record as source material for their electronic record "Black Cherry". And there has been a recent movement of the juxtaposition of improvised music and electronics, with the material on Thirsty Ear, for example. Are you open-minded to further explorations with this medium? WP: Well, I played a couple of weeks ago with the Anti-Pop Consortium. And I did a record last week with DJ Spooky and Matthew Shipp and a European tour. In order to keep the music that we do alive, we've got to expand our audience, because the so-called "jazz audience", they seem to stay where they are. Like there are some listeners of jazz that say "Oh, I only like Miles Davis. I'm just a Miles Davis man.", where he has all Miles Davis records but he won't listen to Kenny Dorham. And they don't grow. But the young people...we've got to keep pumping new blood. So the collaborations are - to me - not restricting; they can in fact be very interesting. I think the record "Black Cherry" was less of a live collaboration in the sense that they took we what had already recorded, and then put their thing on top of it. But the other things that we did with Anti-Pop and DJ Spooky, we were there doing live performances with them or they gave us suggestions of what to do, so it was more of an equal collaboration. So that's very interesting to me...and I think it's good to try to tap into other audiences, because we're not really making a sacrifice, because again, when we say music, it's not about style. It's not like "Well you play avant-garde, so you can't play a beat". I mean who says you can't play a beat? Who says you can't play with electronics? It doesn't make something impure. These younger musicians are doing some interesting things! Now, I haven't initiated these things myself. I mean, I've been called on to work on these projects with people. I myself don't have any particular interest right now in doing something with beats, but I'm certainly willing to come in and add something or play on interesting projects. I also played in a group called The Roots..and that was fun. BC: I want to now ask you some specific, directed questions about your orchestra work. I understand there have been a few permutations of the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra over the years. And I'm wondering about the bulk of material you have written. I know Sam Rivers has talked about the hundreds of compositions he has written for the Rivbea Orchestra, and the ongoing struggle to release as many as possible. How large a library of orchestra compositions do you have over what we have heard recorded, and do you plan to release more? WP: Well, we don't usually play the same piece twice. We usually perform a new piece every time we play. So yes, I would eventually like to release a box set of the Little Huey orchestra. We did some very, very interesting compositions throughout the years. We did something at the St Marks Church with singers that was Madrigal and Mass for Leroy Jefferson [??], and it was recorded but never released. And there are a number of pieces we have that were released. We're beginning to do a new series coming up soon of all new pieces. So eventually I would definitely like to release some more things...we have quite a large repertoire. BC: And do you plan on distributing the compositions to universities for study in the future as a way of sharing your legacy? WP: Sure, eventually I would like to release more songbooks. I have published two and will be releasing another one. I would like to of course have all of that together where it can be reproduced and extended upon by high schools and colleges. BC: How do you go about recruiting for the orchestra? We've seen people come and go... WP: Well, you know, people move away...and I don't really recruit. I let people come to me who are interested and...it just happens, you know. I think eventually I would like to get the orchestra back up to a larger size, but right now it's a smaller size because of gigs and trying to work...the more people you have, the bigger the budget is... BC: Does the group rehearse on a regular basis? WP: It hasn't this year because I've been on the road constantly, but I have planned several periods throughout the year when we'll have weekly rehearsals. But that is in the agenda, because I have a lot of new music. And you also have to sort of concentrate on the band, because having a band is like having a...you know, it's like having a company. People devote their time to it and they make commitments, so it's my job to try to keep it going and provide some sort of work when we can for all of these ensembles. BC: I've noticed a common thread running throughout work, particularly in your orchestra work, which is that of children. In your book The Sound Journal you talk about the Tone World and characters such as Raspy Voice and Little Huey continue to come alive in your music and your poetry. Can you speak to how the world of children and these characters translate to your music? WP: I think children are very inspirational. We refer to the Tone World as the place you go when you're playing music and really into it, and you step outside of yourself. You've stepped into the Tone World. Whether you're a big kid or a little kid, when you wake up one morning and you open the curtain and there's a brand new bike and you ride that bike the rest of the day, you're just *happy*...you're not thinking about anything else. You've stepped in the Tone World. When you come home from school and you're feeling bad and your mom is really nice to you, makes you a cup of tea and gives you a big hug, you've stepped in the Tone World. Any positive act that draws us out of our mundane and takes us to another level, that place that we go is Tone World, the Color World...it just takes us up a step to another consciousness. And there ....[whispering]...when you're playing music and it's working, your feet don't hurt, you don't have a headache, you don't owe any rent... BC: [laughs] WP: [laughs]...you know, you're not hungry. Everything is perfect. And so in a sense, that's what we're seeking, we're trying to get refuge there, because there, we're safe. We're safe in the Tone World. Because there's no politicians in the Tone World starting wars and trying to destroy the world, and if we can stay there as much as we can when we play music, we learn. We get into learning the secrets of life there. And we get back to the characters and they enter these different enchanted places...you know, you begin to believe in these things! There's a record called Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy. It comes from the time when I was a kid, my brother and I were in Brooklyn and these kids robbed us of our money. But I took it another step, and I put a story where we're getting robbed, but...they're sitting on their stoop counting their money and this rain comes down, and the musicians begin to play. And they are so full of compassion, the guys who did this dastardly deed, they come and they apologize and they give us back our money. A negative turns into a positive. So with all of these things...you have to be as real as possible. You have to really believe in things when you're a musician. You have to believe that every time you play, that a miracle can occur. This may sound corny, but you have to believe it. I think that's what separates the musicians who can really do it from the musicians who can't, because you have to believe that what you're doing is the most important thing in the world when you're doing it, and that all these wondrous things can happen. http://briancarpenter.net/content/radio-interview-william-parker.html
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