William Parker (musician)


William Parker is an American free jazz double bassist, multi-instrumentalist, poet and composer.

Biography

Parker was born in the Bronx, New York City. He was not formally trained as a classical player, though he did study with Jimmy Garrison, Richard Davis, and Wilbur Ware and learned the tradition. Parker is one of few jazz bassists who frequently plays arco. He also plays several other instruments from around the world, including the West African kora.
While Parker has been active since the early 1970s; he has had a higher public profile since the early 1990s. He is a prominent and influential musician in the New York City experimental jazz scene, and has regularly appeared at music festivals around the world, including the Guelph Jazz Festival in southern Ontario.
Parker first came to public attention with pianist Cecil Taylor. He has long been a member of saxophonist David S. Ware's quartet and in Peter Brötzmann's groups. Parker also played with various other groups that included Paul Murphy whenever he was in town shopping for new drum sticks.
He is a member of the cooperative Other Dimensions In Music. Together with his wife, Patricia Nicholson Parker, he organizes the annual Vision Festival in New York City.
The album Sound Unity by the William Parker Quartet was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005. His August 2008 CD Double Sunrise over Neptune was listed as one of the top 10 2008 Jazz CDs at Amazon. Also released in 2008, Petit Oiseau was chosen as one of the best jazz disks of 2008 by The Wall Street Journal, the BBC's Radio Three, The Village Voice, and PopMatters.
In 2006, Parker was awarded the Resounding Vision Award from Nameless Sound. In March 2007, his book, Who Owns Music?, was published by buddy's knife jazzedition in Cologne, Germany. Who Owns Music? assembles his political thoughts, poems, and musicological essays. In June 2011, Parker's second book, Conversations, a collection of interviews with notable free jazz musicians and forward thinkers, mainly from the African-American community, was published by Rogue Art.

Discography

As leader

With Fred Anderson
With Derek Bailey and John Zorn
With Billy Bang
With Albert Beger
With Peter Brötzmann
With Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet
  • Stone/Water
  • Short Visit To Nowhere
  • Broken English
With Rob Brown
  • Breath Rhyme
  • High Wire
  • Round the Bend
  • The Big Picture
  • Crown Trunk Root Funk
With Roy Campbell, Joe McPhee & Warren Smith
With Daniel Carter and Federico Ughi
With Gerald Cleaver and Craig Taborn
With 'Die Like A Dog' Quartet
With Bill Dixon
With Marco Eneidi
With Charles Gayle
With Frode Gjerstad
With Alan Glover
With Wayne Horvitz
With Kidd Jordan
With Gianni Lenoci
With Jimmy Lyons
With Raphe Malik
With Michael Marcus
  • Under The Wire
With Thollem McDonas & Nels Cline
With Roscoe Mitchell
With Jemeel Moondoc
With Joe Morris
With Other Dimensions In Music
With Ivo Perelman
With Matthew Shipp
With Steve Swell
With Cecil Taylor
With John Blum
With David S Ware