Evan Parker Interview
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http://evanparker.com/interviews.php All about Jazz Interview By John Eyles, published: March 9, 2003 One of the many benefits of being a music fan in London is the opportunity to se e Evan Parker perform regularly. Parker is one of the giants of improvised music , with a career that stretches back to the dawn of the music in the mid sixties. But he is always pushing forward, and appears in a wide variety of contexts fro m solo performances up to large ensembles such as the London Improvisers Orchest ra and the Dedication Orchestra. In January, he was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the Spring Heel Jack national tour that also featured Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Han Bennink and Jason Pearce. On February 19th, Parker appeared at the (packed out) Vortex in an amazing quartet with Steve Beresford on piano, John Edwards on bass and Mark Sanders on drums. Spring Heel Jack (Ashley Wales a nd John Coxon) were in the audience, and there was talk of them appearing at the Vortex with Parker soon. Two days later, I met Parker for this interview. We met in the cafe at Ray's Jaz z shop, one of the best in London, which has recently relocated to Foyles booksh op in Charing Cross Road. This meant that music was playing over the sound syste m, some of which occasionally distracted Parker. AAJ: I'd like to start off talking about the Spring Heel Jack tour, as it is com paratively recent. Talking to them at the Vortex the other evening, their reacti on was that it had exceeded their wildest dreams. EP: They are fantastically enthusiastic guys. They are definitely a breath of fr esh air in their open mindedness and their voracious appetite for music of all k inds. It reminded in some quite fundamental way why I got involved in music myse lf. For such a long time it has just been what I do. It was nice to be reminded of that state of jumping around enthusiasm, and even to be infected by it to a d egree. Plus they are very interesting characters apart from their relationship w ith music. They are great as individuals and then you put the two of them togeth er, a quite unlikely pairing in many ways, and you get the synergy which is prec isely what Buckminster Fuller says you should get. They are a nice illustration of that. It was a real pleasure to be with them for ten days, or whatever it was . AAJ: How did that work out? Because it wasn't just them you were with? EP: We had one day's rehearsal. And we had done the recordings [ Masses and Amas sed ], although I don't think that impinged very much on the material we prepare d for the tour - there may have been a couple of samples. It suited me very well , because in one rehearsal I could memorise everything I needed to know. So I di dn't have to bother with music stands and bits of paper and all of that for the first few gigs or for the whole tour. Sometimes that is necessary because there is just too much to memorise. In this case there was a real minimal amount of fi xed material and even what was fixed was open to fresh interpretation every nigh t. Probably the one who freshly interpreted the most - as you might guess - was Han Bennink. He never takes a great deal of interest in what is supposed to be f ixed and what is supposed to be free anyway, which is good because he knows his own temperament very well indeed. That one rehearsal didn't even last all day. W e had set it for about ten or twelve hours but we just did a sensible minimum an d went to Bath, the first concert, with just that edge you need of not being ove r-rehearsed. From there, we just consolidated the material each night. The Queen
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