William Parker

William Parker is a musician, improviser, and composer. He plays the bass, shakuhachi, double reeds, tuba, donson ngoni and gembri. He was born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York. He studied bass with Richard Davis, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, Wilber Ware, and Jimmy Garrison. He studied rhythmic concepts with Billy Higgins.  He entered the music scene in 1971 playing with many musicians on the avant-garde school Bill Dixon, Jemeel Moondoc, Beaver Harris, Sunny Murray, Grachan Monchur III, Charles Tyler, Gunter Hampel, Jeanne Lee, Billy Higgins, Charles Brackeen, Alan Silva, Frank Wright, Frank Lowe, Rashid Ali, Donald Ayler, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, Milford Graves and with traditionalists like Walter Bishop, Sr. and Maxine Sullivan. Early projects with dancer and choreographer Patricia Nicholson created a huge repertoire of composed music for multiple ensembles ranging from solo works to big band projects. Parker played in the Cecil Taylor unit from 1980 through 1991. He also developed a strong relationship with the European Improvised Music scene playing with musicians such as Peter Kowald, Peter Brotzmann , Han Bennink, Tony Oxley, Connie Bauer Derek Bailey, Louis Sclavis, and Louis Moholo. Also, the downtown NY Music Scene paying with Butch Morris, Wayne Horvitz, John Zorn, Bern Nix, Joe Morris, He began leading his own bands on a regular basis in 1994 starting two ensembles, In Order To Survive a sextet and The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. In 2001, Parker released O’Neal’s Porch, which marked a turn toward a more universal sound working with his working with drummer Hamid Drake. The group Raining on the Moon Quintet was an extension of the O’Neal’s porch quartet adding vocalist, Leena Conquest and eventually pianist Eri Yamamoto. William has through the years done special projects Most notable among many recent projects is the Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield and the Essence of Ellington featuring a 15-piece band plus vocalist playing the music of Edward Kennedy Ellington. He has taught at Bennington College, NYU, The New England Conservatory of Music, Cal Arts, New School University and Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. He has also taught music workshops throughout the world including Paris, Berlin and Tokyo and the Lower East Side. Parker is also a theorist and author of several books including the Sound Journal, Document Humanum, Music and the Shadow People and The Mayor of Punkville and a series of musician interview Books/  Conversations I and Conversations II.