"Can you think of a better saxophone player? I can't. He is a giant." - Robert Wyatt

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 first night of the celebrations, Parker performs with the legendary Australian improvising trio The Necks. Parker has only performed with The Necks on one previous occasion for the BBC's Late Junction last year, with the Australian trio specifically requesting him as somebody with whom they'd like to record a session. Tony Buck later credited the experience of playing with Parker as being largely influential in the remarkable set The Necks played at Cafe OTO later the same day. Tonight's performance brings four masters of their craft back together to build on the tantalising fragments they laid down last time around.




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


THE NECKS

Chris Abrahams piano
Lloyd Swanton bass
Tony Buck drums

Together for 26 years the Australian cult trio, The Necks, have enthralled audiences worldwide with their compelling style of improvisation. Defying orthodox description, not entirely avant-garde, nor minimalist, nor ambient, nor jazz, their music is regularly described internationally as, simply, unique. Featuring lengthy pieces of slow-form development which build in mesmerizing, epic fashion frequently underpinned by an insistent deep groove, their performances are never less than phenomenal.

"one of the most extraordinary groups on the planet...not so much a trio as a revolutionary consortium redefining music...“ The Guardian