Original image of Evan Parker at the Big Ears Festival in 2019 by There Stands the Glass.
I regret passing on an opportunity to chat with Evan Parker during the 2019 edition of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. Parker stood with attendees on a sidewalk waiting for a venue’s doors to open for his matinee performance. More familiar with Parker’s legendary status in new music circles than with his actual work, I wasn’t yet prepared to engage in anything more than small talk with the titanic figure.
I’ve since developed an incapacitating reverence for the iconoclastic British saxophonist after listening to dozens of hours of his recordings, a tiny fraction of the 76-year-old’s canon. The latest example of his genius is Togetherness Music, a spectacularly ambitious “six-movement quasi-orchestral work” overseen by pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins. Parker’s presence acts as a lit fuse amid the combustible large ensemble that includes strings and electronics.
In expanding the outer limits of the innovations of Charles Mingus and Charles Ives, Togetherness Music blends jazz-based improvisation with contemporary classical music. I’m all in, but my enthusiasm could become problematic. Were I to encounter Parker today, I’d almost certainly embarrass myself with unhinged musings on the uncommonly fertile new ground he and collaborators like Hawkins have forged.
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I’m honored to have been asked to participate in The 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. My notes about a challenging aspect of the selection process are at Plastic Sax.