"Evan unfailingly asks questions of musical - and political - norms and throughout his career has built up a tremendous well of experience, learning on the hoof early on, absorbing the lessons that others bring to the jazz improviser's table, continuing to refine and develop techniques that are combined with his insights to shape his own highly distinctive voice." - London Jazz News

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.

For the third night of the celebrations, Parker performs with longstanding collaborators, the pioneering British free improvisation group AMM in their current incarnation of John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost. Percussionist Prévost was one of the group’s founders and is also the author to several books about improvisation. Piano player Tilbury is considered one of the major interpreters of contemporary piano music, particularly Anglo American composers such as Cage, Feldman and Cardew, in addition being an improviser. Tilbury is also author to a biography of Cornelius Cardew. Parker has released recording with both Tilbury and Prévost as well as founding the Freedom of the City festival with Prévost in 2001.




EVAN PARKER / saxophones

"ln The Human Province, Elias Canetti writes "lt is not enough to think, one also has to breathe. Dangerous are the thinkers who have not breathed enough." In Evan Parker's music, thought and breath are continuous, each the instrument and measure of the other." Stuart Broomer, Coda 1995

Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).

Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.

Evan Parker website




JOHN TILBURY / piano

British pianist John Tilbury is renowned for his remarkable touch and in constant demand as an interpreter of piano pieces by composers such as Morton Feldman and John Cage. During the 1960s, Tibury was closely associated with the composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music he has interpreted and recorded and a member of the Scratch Orchestra. He is also an incredible improvisor, most famously as a member of legendary British group AMM.




EDDIE PRÉVOST

Eddie Prévost plays with immense fire, grace and invention. Founder of the essential AMM, collaborator of the greatest improvisers internationally, since the 60's he has kept a continuous contact with the scene and always manages to invent anew his contribution to "meta-music".