William Parker is one of the most recorded bassists in jazz history, a celebrated, wide-ranging composer, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, poet, essayist, and painter.
Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World comprises ten unissued albums written and recorded for various soloists and ensembles between 2017 and 2019 -- he doesn't always appear -- including seven for vocalists. The music is not limited to jazz: There are excursions into classical, soul, free improv, blues, global sounds, and more. Blue Limelight features vocalist
Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez fronting a piano quartet with two drummers, chamber strings, and oboe. The music ranges from crystalline ballads ("Listen,") to bumping R&B ("Cosmic Funk"), gospelized soul ("A Great Day to Be Dead"), and syncopated jazz recitatives (Recall"). Child of Sound contains 14 songs for piano performed solo by
Eri Yamamoto. They showcase
Parker's love of simple melody. Check the majestic nursery rhyme "Malachi's Mode" or the hymn "The Golden Light," and the spectral tonal studies such as "Rez Sunset." "Baldwin," the opening track on The Majesty of Jah, features
James Baldwin's disembodied voice alongside
Jalalu Kalvert Nelson's muted trumpet and sonic effects.
Ellen Christi lends her voice to the strolling jazz-cum-reggae of the title track to the vanguard scatting in "Freedom" and the provocative spiritual drift of "Sun Song." The experimental fourth disc Cheops is performed by vocalist
Kyoko Kitamura and a group consisting of vibes, tuba, soprano sax, drums, and bass. It ranges across classical, world, and freely improvised terrain. Harlem Speaks, fronted by
Fay Victor, engages bop, swing, and blues with
Parker and
Hamid Drake as her accompanists. Mexico consists of four long vanguard works, performed by an international ensemble of artists/activists fronted by Mexican vocalist
Jean Carla Rodea. Vocalist
Lisa Sokolov delivers Afternoon Poem a cappella. Her manner of inhabiting a melody with disciplined phrasing and consummate breath control evokes an entire dimension of startling and deeply moving sound as music.
Andrea Wolper fronts a septet -- with
Parker playing cornet -- on Lights in the Rain (The Italian Director's Suite). Seven of its songs are titled for Italian directors, reflecting
Parker's long obsession with cinema and film composition, extending the medium he exercised on his contemporary score for
Alphaville did. The final two discs are instrumental. They include The Fastest Train wherein
Parker and trio play dozens of wind, reed, and percussion instruments between them in spacious improvisational pieces. Manzanar comprises abstract folk suites played by string quartets, with reeds, winds, and percussion.
Parker plays ethnic flutes and a khaen mouth organ, while saxophonist
Daniel Carter guests on the provocative closing suite "Being Native." Two enclosed booklets contain liner notes from
Parker, interview fragments and beautiful art, as well as lyrics. Each disc is unique, intimate, revelatory.
Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World offers proof that
Parker's vast, edifying sound universe seeks nothing less than to decode the world with beauty, inspiration, revolutionary lyricism, and spiritual aspiration, without pretension or artifice. ~ Thom Jurek
