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Multi-instrumentalist and composer William Parker
Few musicians on the planet can convey a sense of physicality more effectively than William Parker the multi-instrumentalist and composer best recognized as a titan on upright bass, especially in the flowing continuum of experimental jazz.
So it comes as welcome news that the Vision Festival, over which he always presides as a benevolent guide, will return in person this summer, beginning July 22 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. (He will it kick off himself, in an Opening Healing Ceremony that also includes his wife, Arts For Art founder / artistic director Patricia Nicholson Parker.)
But well before that milestone, Parker will perform a special concert in celebration of
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Melissa Aldana has a clear memory of the first Blue Note album that left a strong impression:
A Night at the Village Vanguard, which immortalized a 1957 club date by Sonny Rollins. Growing up in Santiago, Chile, the daughter of an accomplished tenor saxophonist, she latched on to the album s message right away. I used to play alto, and I changed to tenor when I started getting into Sonny, Aldana tells WBGO. And I learned so much from that album: it gave me such a sense of direction of how I want to sound and what I’m aiming for as a saxophone player.
WBGO Composer, conductor and pianist Carla Bley at the Town Hall, on a 2015 memorial for her longtime collaborator Charlie Haden.
When Carla Bley hitchhiked from Oakland, Calif. to New York City at age 17, it was one in a series of renegade actions that have defined an irrefutably original career. She found her way to Birdland, landing a job as a cigarette girl and a perfect perch to absorb musical lessons from the likes of Count Basie, Miles Davis and Horace Silver.
Largely self-taught as a pianist (having learned the basics from her father), Carla was first and foremost a composer. She began to earn a reputation when her pieces turned up on albums by equally free-thinking artists like George Russell, Gary Burton and Jimmy Giuffre, along with her first husband, pianist Paul Bley. She then helped organize an avant-garde collective called the Jazz Composers Guild with another partner, Michael Mantler.
WBGO s Gary Walker, winner of the Marian McPartland-Willis Conover Award for Career Achievement in Broadcasting.
Longtime WBGO host and music director Gary Walker and the podcast Jazz United are among the winners of the 2021 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards.
They join bassist Ron Carter, honored for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz, and
Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead, recipient of Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism, along with others recognized in a total of 47 categories.
Gary Walker won the Marian McPartland-Willis Conover Award for Career Achievement in Broadcasting, which has also been bestowed on WBGO’s Rhonda Hamilton and Michael Bourne. Jazz United, hosted by Greg Bryant and Nate Chinen, won Podcast of the Year in its first year of eligibility; last year the award went to WBGO’s The Checkout, produced and hosted by Simon Rentner.