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Bassist/composer William Parker has music oozing from his soul at all times. Not just the experimental jazz for which he’s known – literally anything. If he finds a notion in a corner of his expansive artistic imagination, he’ll round up some pals from his voluminous Rolodex and start a project. Case in point: a pair of albums that range far and wide away from the sounds that get him into Downbeat.
For Heart Trio, Parker recruits his frequent compadres Cooper-Moore and Hamid Drake. While Drake plays drums as always (including a frame drum alongside his kit), Parker and Cooper-Moore ignore their traditional double bass and piano. The leader instead picks up the Western African string instrument the ngoni, the Japanese shakuhachi (and other flutes), and the bass duduk horn, while C-M sits down with his homemade instruments: a marimba-like piece called an ashimba, and the self-explanatory hoe-handle harp. The sound of the three-headed improvisations comes closest to African music, but filing it under any one label does it a disservice. Instead, the free-wheeling tuneage expresses a world-encompassing freedom that, as the title suggests, comes straight from the heart. As spiritual a journey as it is musical, Heart Trio speaks to the culture of humanity.
Though best known as an instrumentalist, Parker is equally enamored of words, as his occasional spoken word recordings, essays, and poetry make clear. For Cereal Music (hardy-har-har), he teams up with singer and sound designer Ellen Christi for a program of stories, musings, and philosophy. As Christi notes in the liners, Parker’s gravelly tone is warm and welcoming, even soothing, and his demeanor calm, no matter what kind of tale he tells. Accordingly, she surrounds his voice with nature sounds, found percussion, and ambient washes of melody – plus his bass and, occasionally, her soaring soprano. Cuts like “Do Dreams Sleep” and “We Were Very Civilized” come across as perceived wisdom as much as word jazz, but the pair also has a good time with onomatopoeia on “Batala,” one of three bonus tracks found on CD and DL. (Yes, vinyl revivalist fans, those days are back.) Christi also gets her own spotlights for “Ellen and Leaves Floating” and a bonus cover of Parker’s beautiful “Prayer.” Cereal Music is a unique item in Parker’s catalog, but not one that will alienate anyone familiar with the depth and breadth of his vision.
