The bassist, composer and poet William Parker is the soul of the Lower East Side free jazz scene. A veteran of ensembles led by Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Billy Bang and David S. Ware, Parker is also remarkable leader in his own right. In 2021 he released a ten-disc boxed set, The Music of William Parker: Migration of Silence into and out of the Tone World, Volumes 1-10, featuring compositions in a dizzying range of styles. With his wife and collaborator, the dancer Patricia Nicholson Parker, Parker has turned the annual Vision Festival into one of the defining events in New York creative music. In our conversation, William spoke to me about his early years in the Bronx, how he rose up in the “Loft scene” of the 1970s, his experiences with Cecil Taylor, and his understanding of music as a force of revolutionary social transformation.Links and References:recordings in this episodeMigration of Silence into and out of the Tone WorldI Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis MayfieldPiercing The VeilFarmers by Nature: Love and GhostsCecil Taylor Unit: The EighthBlue Lime Light: A Tribute to Cecil TaylorDavid S. Ware Quartet - SurrenderedJames Brandon Lewis: Jesup Wagonlinks and additional music Universal Tonality - Cisco BradleyArts for Art / Vision FestivalWilliam Parker Tone World - New York TimesThe Life and Music of William Parker - Brooklyn RailLisa SokolovDavid S. Ware & ApogeeDavid S. Ware - Passage to MusicAmiri Baraka - Black Music (re: Jazz and the White Critic)Art Taylor - Notes and Tones

The bassist, composer and poet William Parker is the soul of the Lower East Side free jazz scene. A veteran of ensembles led by Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Billy Bang and David S. Ware, Parker is also remarkable leader in his own right. In 2021 he released a ten-disc boxed set, The Music of William Parker: Migration of Silence into and out of the Tone World, Volumes 1-10, featuring compositions in a dizzying range of styles. With his wife and collaborator, the dancer Patricia Nicholson Parker, Parker has turned the annual Vision Festival into one of the defining events in New York creative music. In our conversation, William spoke to me about his early years in the Bronx, how he rose up in the “Loft scene” of the 1970s, his experiences with Cecil Taylor, and his understanding of music as a force of revolutionary social transformation.Links and References:recordings in this episodeMigration of Silence into and out of the Tone WorldI Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis MayfieldPiercing The VeilFarmers by Nature: Love and GhostsCecil Taylor Unit: The EighthBlue Lime Light: A Tribute to Cecil TaylorDavid S. Ware Quartet - SurrenderedJames Brandon Lewis: Jesup Wagonlinks and additional music Universal Tonality - Cisco BradleyArts for Art / Vision FestivalWilliam Parker Tone World - New York TimesThe Life and Music of William Parker - Brooklyn RailLisa SokolovDavid S. Ware & ApogeeDavid S. Ware - Passage to MusicAmiri Baraka - Black Music (re: Jazz and the White Critic)Art Taylor - Notes and Tones

George Lewis is a composer of contemporary classical music, an avant-garde jazz trombonist, an electronic sound artist, an essayist, and the author of A Power Stronger than Itself, the definitive history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a black composers’ collective based in Chicago, where he grew up. A dazzling polymath, he moves between the worlds of new music, jazz, academia, computer science, philosophy and visual art with extraordinary ease and humility. In our conversation, George talked about his working-class Chicago roots, his experiences at Yale and in Europe, his views on “cultural appropriation,” his ambivalence about being seen as a trombonist, why he thinks about John Coltrane more than John Cage, and why he’s proud to be considered an Afro-futurist.A Power Stronger Than ItselfThe Recombinant TrilogyRainbow FamilyThe Will to AdornImprovised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological PerspectivesJessica EkomaneSeth Parker WoodsDana Reason - The Myth of AbsenceSavvy Contemporary - Anton Wilhelm Amo

George Lewis is a composer of contemporary classical music, an avant-garde jazz trombonist, an electronic sound artist, an essayist, and the author of A Power Stronger than Itself, the definitive history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a black composers’ collective based in Chicago, where he grew up. A dazzling polymath, he moves between the worlds of new music, jazz, academia, computer science, philosophy and visual art with extraordinary ease and humility. In our conversation, George talked about his working-class Chicago roots, his experiences at Yale and in Europe, his views on “cultural appropriation,” his ambivalence about being seen as a trombonist, why he thinks about John Coltrane more than John Cage, and why he’s proud to be considered an Afro-futurist.A Power Stronger Than ItselfThe Recombinant TrilogyRainbow FamilyThe Will to AdornImprovised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological PerspectivesJessica EkomaneSeth Parker WoodsDana Reason - The Myth of Absence

Airs: November 16, 2021 George Lewis is a composer of contemporary classical music, an avant-garde jazz trombonist, an electronic sound artist, an essayist, and the author of A Power Stronger than Itself, the definitive history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a black composers’ collective based in Chicago, where he grew up. A dazzling polymath, he moves between the worlds of new music, jazz, academia, computer science, philosophy and visual art with extraordinary ease and humility. In our conversation, George talked about his working-class Chicago roots, his experiences at Yale and in Europe, his views on “cultural appropriation,” his ambivalence about being seen as a trombonist, why he thinks about John Coltrane more than John Cage, and why he’s proud to be considered an Afro-futurist. Links and References:A Power Stronger Than ItselfThe Recombinant TrilogyRainbow FamilyThe Will to AdornImprovised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological PerspectivesJessica EkomaneSeth Parker WoodsDana Reason - The Myth of Absence