On September 14th, AUM Fidelity will release William Parker‘s I Plan To Stay A Believer: The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield (AUM062/063) and David S. Ware‘s Onecept (AUM064). The former is a two-disc collection of live performances by bassist/composer William Parker’s longstanding ensemble, The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield, which has paid tribute to the R&B and soul music legend at concerts all over the world for the past decade. The latter is a fully improvised studio recording by David S. Ware, featuring Parker and drummer Warren Smith, that celebrates his 50th anniversary as a saxophonist.
I Plan To Stay A Believer: The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield features 11 tracks from six different concerts spanning the group’s 2001 world premiere at the Banlieues Bleues Festival in Paris through its late October 2008 appearances at the Jazz & Wine of Peace Festival and Botticino Jazz in Italy. All told, this release highlights Parker’s original arrangements of 10 Mayfield compositions, as well as two of his own pieces, most of which feature additional words and lyrics by poet/activist Amiri Baraka. In addition to Parker (bass, doson’ngoni and balofon) and Baraka (vocals and poetry), the group’s core members are Leena Conquest (vocals), Lewis Barnes (trumpet), Darryl Foster (saxophones), Sabir Mateen (saxophones and flute), Dave Burrell (piano) and Hamid Drake (drums). Joining them along the way were special guests pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, drummer Guillermo E. Brown and three local choirs, including Brooklyn’s New Life Tabernacle Generation of Praise Choir.
“Every song written or improvised has an inside song that lives in the shadows, in-between the sounds and silences and behind the words, pulsating, waiting to be reborn as a new song,” writes Parker in the liner notes. “In the 1960s, during the civil rights movement, there was a musical soundtrack in the background: Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane. Curtis Mayfield was right in the middle directing his music to the cry of freedom. This new song although still connected to the mother is separate with its own heart, lungs and soul. It was never the goal to do a cover; we can never play Curtis Mayfield better than Curtis Mayfield did. So, we built another house out of the same wood they build basses and violins with, wood struck by purple lightning bolts. Then we find our center within his music so that we may become ourselves. Hopefully, to present a full spectrum story that would be in tune with the original political and social message laid out by Curtis.”
Parker is among the most active and highly regarded musicians performing today. He has been called “one of the most inventive bassist/leaders since Mingus” (The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, Eighth Edition), “one of the true leaders in American music” (Bill Shoemaker, JazzTimes), “avant-garde jazz’s preeminent bassist” (A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer) and “an artist whose talent seems to have no limits” (James Taylor, AllAboutJazz.com). In March 2007, Time Out New York named him one of its 50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time. In addition to The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, his main outlets as a bandleader are the William Parker Quartet, the Raining On The Moon Sextet and The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. His illustrious 30-plus year career also includes several high-profile projects with an array of creative music’s most esteemed figures and appearances on hundreds of recordings. He is also an educator, organizer, theorist and author. Learn more at http://www.williamparker.net
Onecept is the culmination of David S. Ware’s first five decades as a saxophonist, a path he has followed with great success since he was nine years old. He originally planned to mark the occasion with a new recording session scheduled for early 2009, but fate stepped in and the half-century milestone suddenly took a back seat to the kidney transplant that sidelined him for most of that year. Although his physical ability to play music was never compromised, it was five months before he regained the stamina to perform in public again. Shortly after his triumphant return to the stage—the October 2009 solo concert documented on Saturnian (solo saxophones, vol. 1), his most recent AUM Fidelity release—he returned to the studio to fulfill his plan to record a special project featuring him on three different horns: the saxello, stritch and tenor saxophone. Joining him in this endeavor are Parker (bass) and Warren Smith (drums and tympani), who both appeared on his acclaimed January 2009 release, Shakti (AUM052), and performed with him at Vision Festival XV in June.
“What I do on the saxophone is always in total control,” Ware explains. “I don’t play anything that is out of control. That has always been the case. What I’m trying to do now is continue that control, that technique, that mastery of the horn. To be able to articulate better and better what’s in the musical mind. The saxophone is a mechanical thing; is there any limit to the speed at which you can press them keys down, to which it will function correctly? That’s what I’m trying to do now, push it as far, as fast as the human fingers can move. The intent of the music is for people to listen to what it is I do—whether it’s in solo context or group context—and to make them start thinking about things in a non-physical way. To start feeling, sensing, intuiting something beyond their individuality, to take them in the direction to something beyond, something that transcends their individuality, not outside them, something within them. The intent is for the music to trigger that search.”
“In the course of a career that has involved considerable sacrifice and humility,” wrote Brian Morton in The Nation, “he has created a body of work that is—uniquely on the current scene—epic.” Active since the late 1960′s, David Spencer Ware has performed and recorded with many notable figures, but he is best-known for his legacy as a leader, defined by his trademark sound, a devout spirituality and masterful interplay with his all-star ensembles. His discography features 25 titles under his own name, including 17 at the helm of the David S. Ware Quartet, which helped redefine creative improvised music throughout the 1990′s and beyond. “By any definition, David S. Ware has to be counted among the giants on his horn,” declared AllMusic.com’s Steven Loewy. “His sound alone is enough to clear the room of contenders,” adds author and jazz critic Gary Giddins. “It is huge, big enough to house a large family, several pets, and half the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Learn more at http://www.aumfidelity.com/david-s-ware.html
