William Parker
High Wire
Though he’s technically dazzling, with remarkable power and finesse honed under masters like Milt Hinton, Richard Davis, and Jimmy Garrison, it is his extraordinary selflessness that has become Parker’s trademark. Developing incisive, expressive music and interacting with other musicians is what drives him. Glory does not. For this he’s been sought out to play on nearly 100 records. On two rather different recent recordings, one with Parker as leader and the other with him supporting alto saxophonist Rob Brown, he demonstrates both the versatility and the generosity of his playing.
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Even when Parker sits out, his ideas about creative dialogue guide the proceedings. “Unrestricted (for Julius Hemphill)” is a gorgeous hymnlike duet between Ibarra and Moore that Parker wrote but doesn’t play on. The piano introduces the aching melody while Ibarra presents a funereal procession of nonrhythmic percussion–bells, mute tom thuds, cymbal eruptions–but the instrumentalists soon trade places. Moore shifts from a fixed tempo to a free investigation as Ibarra’s creative drum play takes the lead spot, before they revert back to their original positions at the tune’s bittersweet conclusion.
