“Can you think of a better saxophone player? I can’t. He is a giant.” Robert Wyatt
Evan Parker is one of the great saxophone players, pushing the instrument into uncharted waters since his emergence in the late 1960s. To mark his 70th year, Parker curates a week of performances at the Vortex and Cafe Oto, performing with some of the artists he’s worked so closely with over the years. Both venues are close to Parker’s heart, having built reputations as spaces where musicians can experiment and take risks, and for this week they present a very special programme of concerts on alternating nights.
Evan Parker
Free improvised music has accounted for most of Parker’s activities over the last forty years, whether playing solo or in groups, but both jazz and art music composers have also deployed the arresting physicality of his sound as a contrasting and energising element. His saxophones have been heard inside jazz big bands led by Kenny Wheeler, Chris McGregor, Barry Guy, Stan Tracey and Charlie Watts and in the chamber music of Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Frederic Rzewski and others.
Trance Map Quartet with Matt Wright computer and turntables, Hannah Marshall cello, Barry Guy bass
Trance Map is part of an ongoing body of work on Psi records, which uses Evan Parker’s music as source material to be manipulated to create new works. Trance Map blurs the distinction between playing, mixing and editing, filtered through the silicon of the hard drive.
Barry Guy
Barry Guy is one of the world’s leading bass soloists and improvisers. Well known as director and founder of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, also as a composer of new music for chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras, he founded the Barry Guy New Orchestra in the mid 90’s.
Hannah Marshall
Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ – Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.
“sublime technical abilities…she reinvents melodic lines, provides spectacular harmonic intervention”…’ sets the pulse around which much of the music revolves” Raul D’Gama Rose
