Evan Parker
Evan Parker is a virtuosic solo improviser born in the UK in 1944. Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free jazz and free improvisation, and has pioneered or substantially expanded an array of extended techniques.
Evan Parker is a virtuosic solo improviser born in the UK in 1944. Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free jazz and free improvisation, and has pioneered or substantially expanded an array of extended techniques.
True Live Walnuts
1990 release ** "A classic of '90s avant garde jazz, True Live Walnuts features Italian percussionist Mauro Orselli joined by British saxophonist Evan Parker and keyboardist Antonello Salis for some of the most fascinating free music of recent years. Performing just two pieces live at the Europa Jazz Festival in Noci, Italy, the three bring about an extraordinary union of disparate voices in a coherent whole. Orselli is stupendous on percussion, where he interacts with Parker as a second horn. T…
Improvvisazioni
1995 release ** "This engaging little slab reflects a 1995 recording date between Evan Parker's saxophones, Antonello Salis' piano and accordion, and Mauro Orselli's drums and cymbals. Featuring nine variously timed improvisations, this works simply because of the sheer delight and will of the performers. Here, texture means nothing, tonality means nothing, listening means nothing. The reason for being, the raison d'être, if you will, is simply action and reaction and more action. This is consci…
So It Goes...
*2025 stock* "Barry Guy and I first met and played together in a version of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the days of the legendary Little Theatre Club. The late John Stevens, visionary prophet of the coming music was the key figure at the centre of things who brought us together. “So it goes“ – John often used this figure of speech.
I was reminded of this when I was looking through Samuel Beckett’s Collected Letters, hoping to glean some titles, knowing that Barry would be happy with a Beck…
Double Mirror
1996 release ** "Recorded live in 1995, Italian woodwind specialist Stefano Maltese along with fellow countryman, percussionist Antonio Moncada garner the services of modern jazz/improvising superstars pianist Keith Tippett and saxophonist Evan Parker for this engaging affair. Here, some of Italy's finest team with two musicians who respectively helped shape the oft-fabled British free jazz movement for two lengthy improvisational pieces consisting of spurious dialogue, turbulent reinvention, an…
Topos
*2025 stock* When Evan Parker, Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton renewed their association at l’Auditori in Barcelona in March 2006, they chose to call the resulting CD ZAFIRO, or “Sapphire”. The following day, the trio was joined by Catalan pianist Agustí Fernández at the same venue to record the Topos album. The chemistry changes to an almost microscopic world of shifting colours and densities prompted by Fernández’s mercurial articulations of the piano keys and the strings inside the in…
Zafiro
*2025 stock* One live improvisation of over an hour that zips by with the velocity of a three-minute single, Zafiro confirms that one of improvising music’s most enduring partnerships – 25 years and counting – is still a potent and electrifying force. Refining their interaction every time they play together – saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton don’t lack for other gigs, but express instinctive rapport here. Veteran British improvisers, the three use a variet…
Real Time I, II, Bullfighting on Ice
Launching into the new year with some serious heat, the seminal Italian free jazz imprint ICTUS Records returns with their Reissue Series dedicated to archival unreleased gems and back catalogue releases, with three of their most exciting and exhilarating reissues to date: Evan Parker & Andrea Centazzo's "Bullfighting On Ice", and Alvin Curran, Evan Parker, & Andrea Centazzo's “Real Time” and “Real Time Two”. Capturing three of avant-garde music's most visionary voices in rare collaborations at …
Bullfighting on Ice
** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** This album is a historical document in several respects: echo of a creative season in its early, vigorous blossoming, it presents groundbreaking music as it was performed and listened to in a moment that now seems very distant, not just chronologically but also in terms of its cultural context. Furthermore, it serves as a testament to the initial opening of the emerging Italian free music scene to Northern European experience…
Real Time Two
** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline…
Real Time One
** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his o…
The Heraclitean Two-Step, etc.
4CDs box set with 120 page book. The Heraclitean Two-Step, etc. is a 4 CD set of solo, improvised recordings by Evan Parker, along with a 120 page book, including writing by John Corbett, Filipe Gomes, Richard Leigh, Stephen C. Middleton and Robert Stillman; an extended interview with Evan Parker by Martin Davidson; an email exchange between Evan Parker and Hans Falb; along with writing and visual artwork by Evan Parker. The boxset helps to mark Evan Parker’s 80th birthday in 2024, and is the th…
Corner To Corner
*2024 stock* A collaboration between saxofonist Evan Parker and drummer John Stevens. Recorded on 8 June 1993 at Angel Studio, Islington, London Recorded direct to U-Matic master using Schoeps and Neumann microphones.
Rex, Wrecks & XXX
Evan Parker and Matthew Shipp!Two (exceptional) musicians, two backgrounds, two approaches to music, two generations, an ocean between them: at the end, only one music, unique, outstanding, made of listening and respect of each other. The purpose is not to limit themselves to what they might have in common, but to expand the realm of possibility by assimilating in the moment what the other can bring.
NYC 1978
Evan Parker made his first trip to North America as a performer in the fall of 1978 touring solo in the US and Canada. His landmark solo record Monoceros had been recorded in April. This is a recording of his first solo performance in New York City. While it may lack the sonic fidelity of Monoceros, its raw passion makes a statement to the New York audiences lucky to have been at Environ that October evening.
Marconi’s Drift
Evan Parker and Matthew Wright’s Trance Map project has included improvised live events across Europe and the US, involving other invited guest performers, with various Trance Map+ recordings released on Intakt and FMR Records. Since 2020, Trance Map+ have undertaken ambitious streamed and networked performances, connecting with musicians around the world from The Hot Tin venue in Faversham, Kent, UK. In 2022, this resulted in Transatlantic Trance Map, a simultaneous performance between seven mu…
A Life Saved By A Spider And Two Doves
As George Lewis recently said, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between improvised and composed music. It’s a distinction he would like to see dropped. For much of its length this delicately nuanced recording could quite easily be a formal electroacoustic composition, an impression strongly reinforced by the fact that Evan Parker sounds curiously unfamiliar in this new grouping. He’s well used now to working with electronics, but this was a first convocation of this quart…
Gift
Recorded on December 1, 2009 at the Instants Chavirés in Montreuil. Marteau Rouge, legendary band composed of Jean-Marc Foussat (VCS3 synthesizer, toy voices), Jean François Pauvros (guitars, voices) and Makoto Sato (percussions). And the tenor saxophonist and soprano Evan Parker with whom Marteau Rouge had already recorded a CD, “ LIVE”, the year before, released by In Situ in 2009.Hammer Rouge is a trio focused in the tellurical, electric noise with Pauvros’s saturated and electrocuted guitar …
The Topography of the Lungs / Collective Calls / From Saxophone & Trombone (3LP Bundle)
** The three recent Otoroku reissue LPs in a special discounted bundle ** Otoroku, the in-house label for the London venue, Cafe Oto, returns with three new stunners from the legendary Incus catalog - the seminal imprint jointly founded by Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Tony Oxley - the first ever vinyl reissues of Evan Parker / George Lewis’s stunning “From Saxophone & Trombone” (1980), and Evan Parker / Paul Lytton’s mind-bending “Collective Calls (Urban) (Two Microphones)” (1972), as well a…
Dialog
"Dialog: Two Rooms One Vibraphone 1 to 6 & Five Interludes differs, however, from the classical Greek idea of dialectics, that of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, in one respect. There is thesis, from Armaroli, and antithesis, from Parker, but it is a third party, the listener, who provides the synthesis. And there will be as many syntheses, and as much diversity among them, as there are those of us tuning in." -Chris May
In Real Time
*2023 stock* "Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination.
Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of…