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EVAN PARKERExtraordinaryEncountersBy Ted PankenForty-five years into his career as a professionalimproviser, saxophonist EvanShaw Parker remains a road warrior,pursuing a lifestyle—on the move at least sixmonths a year, long rides in cars or trains orairplanes from one destination to another,irregular sleep and meals, less than stellaraccommodations—that could wear down mostartists half his age. Yet Parker, who turns 66this year, embraces the sacrifice of itinerancywith the enthusiastic attitude of a circuit-ridingpreacher or union organizer of days gone bywhose imperative it was to deliver the messagein person.Parker travels neither to praise the Lord nororganize the masses, but to present his suigeneris conception of the saxophone in asmany contexts as possible. He has refined hislanguage with micronic precision, developinghis ability to articulate and develop two orthree simultaneous lines in a sort of musiqueconcrete counterpoint.Even by his standards, Parker took on, as heput it, “an exceptional schedule” over the lastthree months of 2009, bringing his tenor andsoprano saxophones to an extraordinary array ofencounters. There was an October duo inBarcelona with Catalan pianist AgustiFernandez and workshops and concerts withBarry Guy and Paul Lytton in Cannes and Paris.A two-week tour with the Schlippenbach-Lovens trio included engagements in Berlin,Ulrichsberg, Prague and Brataslava, whereParker also found time to play a recital withAlvin Lucier, a concert with the Globe UnityOrchestra and a gig with the electronic unitGroovetronic. He guested with the out-trioMarteau Rouge in Tours, Paris and Brussels;navigated composer-cellist-electronicist WalterPrati’s processed structures with a medium-sizedensemble in Milan; triologued with regularmates John Edwards and Tony Marsh atLondon’s Vortex, where he has a monthly hit,and with keyboardist Stephen Gruen and drummerPhilip Marks in Liverpool.Prior to all of these events, Parker presidedover an audacious two-week residence at theStone, John Zorn’s Lower East Side venue, duringearly October. Hunkered down three blocksaway in a small flat on Avenue D, he took on allcomers, two shows a night of one-shots withpartners representing vastly different predispositionsand ways of thinking about music. After along drive from Montreal, where the nightbefore he had concluded a 3,000-mile, sevengig/seven-nightdriving tour with extended-techniquessax master Ned Rothenberg, he launchedthe proceedings with a solo recital, executedwith characteristic derring-do. After an hour’sinterlude, Parker entered an avuncular duo withsynthesist Richard Teitelbaum; playing sopranosaxophone, he created instantaneous acousticresponses to Teitelbaum’s assorted burbles, birdcalls,critter onomatopoeia, virtual percussion,swoopy waves, Bachian cello, celestial harmonicsand prepared piano pings—they ended spontaneouslyon the same pitch.Such energy and acuity belied whateverexhaustion Parker may have felt, and he delineatedthe harmonics with such precision thatonly the most educated ear could discern that hewas playing with a stock mouthpiece, havingrecently left his three painstakingly customizedones on a train. But to wallow in self-pity wasnot an option, and Parker would carry on.In the opening stages of a meeting with FredFrith, Parker projected droll tenor responses toFrith’s Dadaesque antics on lap guitar, then suddenlyunleashed a jaw-dropping a capella interludeon soprano that led to a duo section markedby vertiginous intervals and audacious unisons.Earlier in the run, Parker and Milford Graves,performing together for the first time before ahouse so jammed that the fire marshals cleared itbefore they were done, played a five-part suitemarked by incessant rhythmic modulation andtension-and-release. Later, with George Lewison trombone, laptop and interactive electronicswith which to modify and manipulate the pitchqualities of Parker’s soprano saxophone lines,Parker—his face beet-red, his embouchure visibleas a dimple-line running 45 degrees fromnose to jaw—went with the flow, circularbreathingto create a feedback loop of chirps,crackles and waves.To honor Thelonious Monk’s birthday afew nights later, Parker, pianist Matthew Shippand bassist William Parker played an informed55-minute abstraction of “Shuffle Boil,” interpolatedwith other Monk fragments. “If they’djumped on the tune at the very outset, well, itwould have gone another way—but theyplayed ambiguously in relation to it,” Parkersaid two days later over lunch on Avenue C.Salt-bearded and bespectacled, he carried acopy of Robin Kelley’s new Monk biography.“The point is to do it so it’s there if youwant to hear it, and not there if you don’t,” hecontinued. “It’s raw material. It’s a free choice.To play freely also means freedom to playthings that you absolutely know and things thatare rather predictable.”Parker mentioned that for his 60th birthday,outcat pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach(an ongoing colleague since the latter ’60s) presentedhim with a handwritten folio of Monktunes, transposed for saxophone.“I’ve since got the official book, whichSteve Lacy told me was accurate, and I’ve beentrying to memorize them all as an homage toSteve,” Parker said. “Monk had a rigorousapproach to constructing a line, which Stevedistilled in his own work—systematic combi-May 2010 DOWNBEAT 39