infotext:
Composer in Dialogue 2009
William Parker & ICI Ensemble
WINTER SUN CRYING
Organized by the ICI forum munich eV and sponsored by the Cultural Department of the City of Munich.
A composition commissioned by the ICI forum munich eV
William Parker was born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York City. Parker, who has been cultivating his own projects of various sizes for over thirty years and also composing for these line-ups (documented on over 20 albums under his own name), is thus in line with other leading bass players such as Charles Mingus, Dave Holland and Barry Guy.
William Parker first attracted international attention, especially in the Cecil Taylor Trio, with whom he worked from 1980 to 1991. But he also played in groups of Peter Brötzmann and Charles Gayle, performed together with Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley, Sunny Murray, Louis Sclavis, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, Rashied Ali, Perry Robinson, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Mat Maneri, Jeanne Lee, John Zorn and DJ Spooky - just to name a few of the most diverse musical personalities with whom William Parker has collaborated.
He played the album with bassist Barre Phillips and bassist Joëlle Léandre After You've Gone in memory of Peter Kowald. With his wife, the dancer Patricia Nicholson, he founded the Vision Festival in New York and developed it into an important event.
He has taught at Bennington College, NYU, The New England Conservatory of Music, Cal Arts, New School University and the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. William Parker is also a poet, theorist and author of a number of books, including Document Humanum, The Sound Journal, who owns music? and The Mayor of Punkville. He wrote the play Music and the Shadow People.
The Boston Globe wrote about him in 2002: »William Parker has emerged as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz.« In 2009 William Parker received the Jazz Journalists Association Award in the category »Bassist of the Year«.
For COMPOSER IN DIALOGUE 2009, William Parker worked with the ICI Ensemble on a composition specially tailored to the ICI – with the improvisational element typical of the ensemble. The concert thus ties in with the groundbreaking encounters in the series Olga Neuwirth, Barry Guy, Pierre Favre, George Lewis, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Vinko Globokar.
program:
Composers in Dialogue
William Parker & ICI Ensemble
Winter sun crying
[01] Bells 08:10
[02] Train 02:59
[03] Winter sun crying 04:24
[04] Earth 03:12
[05] Moon 05:04
[06] Orphans 04:37
[07] Explosion 02:48
[08] Tears 03:03
[09] Hope 02:36
[10] Sky 03:14
[11] Grandma 02:12
[12] Circle 04:00
[13] Hello 03:02
[14] Revolution 06:56
[15] Let's change the world 06:39
total time: 62:56
William Parker, double bass/piccolo trumpet/shakuhachi/double reeds
David Jäger, soprano saxophone/tenor saxophone
Roger Jannotta, alto saxophone/piccolo/flute/clarinet
Markus Heinze, baritone saxophone/tenor saxophone
Christofer Varner, trombone/sampler
Johanna Varner, cello
Martin Wolfrum, piano/keyboard
Gunnar Geisse, laptop/laptop guitar
Georg Janker, double bass/G2
Sunk Pöschl, drums
live recording
Press:
02.01.2012
Muffathale di Monaco, December 20, 2009 and in the progetto Winter Sun Crying composition in dialogue between an insieme di musicians dell'avanguardia jazz. Protagonisti : William Parker, contrabassista newyorkese, esponente di spicco della downtown e l'ICI Ensemble formazione europea che opera dal 1999 da semper orientata alla stretta collaborazione con musicisti di primo piano nell'ambito dell'improvvisazione jazz.
Quindici brani nella descrizione riportata sul retro della copertina per quella che di fatto è una suite di ben 62 minuti e 56 secondi interpretata da una band di 10 musicisti che comprende oltre al già citato Parker (double-bass, piccolo, trumpet, shakuhachi, double reeds) i teutonici: David Jager, soprano & tenor saxophones; Roger Jannotta, alto saxophone, piccolo, flute, clarinet; Markus Heinze, baritone & tenor saxophones; Christofer Varner, trombone, sampler; Martin Wolfrum, piano; Johanna Varner, cello; Gunnar Geisse, laptop & laptop guitar; Georg Janker, double bass and Sunk Poschi, drums.
L'ascolto del cd è come un viaggio attraverso una galassia di suoni e interazioni assolutamente incantevoli. Un continuo sorprendersi per come questi musicisti riescono ad interagire creando dialoghi dalle varie sfaccettature timbriche. Un avvicendamento di climi e atmosphere che non ti aspetti. Un susseguirsi di attività vulcanicamente in ebollizione, luci e colori mutanti, percorsi labirintici apparentemente senza sbocchi che assumono traiettorie imprevedibili in un'incessante fluidità temporale e dialettica senza alcuna ripetitività.
Si intravede dietro tutto ciò una sorta di intelaiatura di fondo un'accennata progettualità da svolgere in una condition di un'assoluta oralità. L'improvvisazione è il sale essenziale di un'opera certamente unica che si aggiunge al carnet delle collaborazioni già attuate dall'ICI Ensemble con musicians quali Vinko Globokar, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Pierre Fabre, George E. Lewis ed Evan Parker, solo alcuni dei tanti , i più noti.
Un'opera che defined il potentiale espressivo e la sintesi che può derivare dalla collaborazione di musicisti europei ed esponenti dell'avanguardia d'oltreoceano. Since ascoltare e riascoltare fino a superare un apparente aspetto ostico che un primo approccio potrebbe falsamente evidenziare. imperdibile.
Giuseppe Mavilla
http://scriveredijazz.blogspot.com/2012/01/winter-sun-crying.html
The ICI Ensemble Munich (International Composers & Improvisers) is a loose group of German musicians, with varying line-ups. They have developed their “Composer in Dialogue” concept to which they invite modern composers, with so far Olga Neuwirth, Barry Guy, Pierre Favre, George Lewis, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Vinko Globokar as invitees. From what I could find, only the collaborations with Neuwirth and Lewis were released on record, but I must say that – like most avant-garde music – their promotion is as amateurish as their music is good.
In 2009, the band invited William Parker to compose for them, and the result is absolutely staggering. Parker has of course composed for improvisational orchestras with his own Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, music of incredible density and freedom.
After some questionable side-steps in the past years, we find the New York artist back in full glory. In fifteen relatively short compositions, Parker develops incredibly coherent gems of sound, with the gravity and solemnity of a Bill Dixon, all forming a single suite, and with a lightness of arrangements that belies the size of the octet, because instruments come and go, for short bursts of sounds, a few phrases. Parker seems to try to evoke the strong memory imprints of his life or youth: “Bells”, “Train”, “Explosion”, “Tears”, or the space around: “Earth”, “Moon”, “Sky”, but then in a deep and meaningful way : full of emotion and spirituality : “Hope”, “Revolution”, “Winter Sun Crying”. The “Train” sounds like a train, or rather the shadow of a train. “Earth” is all angular and hard and unpredictable. “Moon” is slower and eery with unison howls and crescendos. “Explosion” is built around incredible tension, with weird background noises and dark rumbling drums laying the backdrop for innocent flute playing, juxtaposing Not surprisingly, the last piece, “Let's Change The World” is as fragile as it gets, almost transparent music with Parker's bamboo flute adding a kind of universal song for mankind.
Credit also goes to the entire band, who really move as one, with a great sense of direction creating sonic environments that are open in nature. To be clear, this is not all improvisation: this is well thought-through and structured music, with room for exploration and emphasis, and it makes it all the powerful for the listener.
This is jazz in its most modern form and at its best: intelligent, complex, compelling, technically superb, surprising, deep, emotional.
Not to be missed and to me for sure one of the contenders of album of the year.
© Stef
Labels: *****, avant-garde jazz
Heard In
William Parker and the ICI Ensemble
Winter sun crying
(NEOS Music)
Review by Kurt Gottschalk
2011-08-03
It's a sad state of (American) affairs that we so often have to rely on the Europeans to hear the ideas of our mystic geniuses crystallized. Fortunately, however, we do have the Europeans, and their standing orchestras ready to embrace new music, new challenges and new situations. The remarkable Unstable Orchestra of Italy made clockwork out of both Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor, and likewise the German ICI Ensemble — having worked with Barry Guy, Joëlle Léandre, George Lewis, Evan Parker and many others — lent its precise collective hand to William Parker for this 2008 concert recording.
Parker, of course, is a titan of free jazz as well as being a conjurer of large-scale ideas for large ensembles. His Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra can be a force to be reckoned with, especially when a residency or long-term engagement allows opportunity to sharpen its edge. In the country without arts funding such occasions are rare, but when they do occur, Parker can pull from one of his many hats a grandness in vision reminiscent of Mingus, another New York bassist who struggled to realize dreams that outsized nightclubs.
Given the opportunity to work with the diverse nonet on this recording, then, it's surprising that Parker didn't arrive in Munich with a more obvious game plan. The 15 tracks on Winter Sun Crying run as a continuous whole, but there's no obvious structure to the 63-minute suite.
Which doesn't mean there isn't one, of course, nor does it mean there has to be. And there is a cart/horse problem is writing about what an artist might have done, but it's relevant insofar as Winter Sun Crying is such an unusual work in Parker's discography. It comes off as an improvised session, if with more discipline and texture than the typical blowing session, and no composition credits are given on the disc. The ensemble includes a variety of reeds plus trombone, cello, piano, bass and drums, but also a “laptop guitar” and three other players employing electronics. More than that, however, they employ space. They are, clearly, a band which has grown past the point of individual egos. Parker for his part is heard on bass, piccolo trumpet, shakuhachi and double reeds, fully immersed in both band and proceedings. If it is a purely improvised session, it's one done with great tastefulness.
And despite any second-guessing of suppositions, the proceedings are great. It may not have the earmarks of a Parker session (whatever those may be, they're known when they're heard), but it has all the requisite inventiveness of contemporary — perhaps European — structured improvisation. If it's a detour along Parker's capital double-you work, the scenery is still fantastic.