Evan Paker. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

By Martin Schray

The vary of Evan Parker’s musical actions is nearly limitless.
It covers his beginnings within the Nineteen Sixties with John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music
Ensemble by way of to his duos with Paul Lytton and Derek Bailey, the
Schlippenbach Trio, his personal trio with Barry Man and Paul Lytton and his
Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. As well as, there are dozens of occasional
recordings and initiatives that transcend the boundaries of free improvised music
(consider recordings with Robert Wyatt or David Sylvian). 

One attribute is that he has by no means deviated from his unmistakable
stylistic identification. No one performs like him, he has managed to create an
completely unmistakable sound of his personal. That is significantly evident in his
solo recordings, within the chronology of which a transparent growth may be heard.
Already in 1986 Ekkehard Jost seen {that a} rising complexity of musical
materials was recognizeable in Parker’s work, into which the saxophonist has
put lots of work and power, each bodily and psychological. He has all the time
approached the basics of a career with nice seriousness and
depth and he has all the time regarded his music primarily as music to hear
to, not music to bop to or faucet your ft to. Parker is primarily involved
with the thought of the paradox of the qualities of impression. The identical music
may be perceived by the listener as gradual or quick or as a successive sequence
of particular person intervals or as polyphonic polyphony. This has not modified to
today, nor has his huge productiveness. 

To mark his eightieth birthday, we want to focus on a few of his newest
releases at present.