The Heraclitean Two-step,etc.

Description

4 x CDs; 120 page book; slipcase. Helping to mark Evan Parker's 80th birthday in 2024, False Walls is delighted to release a 4 CD set of solo, improvised recordings along with a 120 page book, including writing by John Corbett, Filipe Gomes, Richard Leigh, Stephen C. Middleton and Robert Stillman; an extended interview with Evan Parker by Martin Davidson; an email exchange between Evan Parker and Hans Falb; along with writing and visual artwork by Evan Parker. Evan Parker improvises on the tenor and soprano saxophone, and has performed live and recorded extensively across the UK and internationally. He has pioneered or substantially expanded an array of extended techniques for the saxophone. "The UK's greatest exponent of free jazz." - Mike Hobart, Financial Times. Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Evan 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. The book compiles both historical and contemporary perspectives on Evan's work, by a range of contributors as well as Evan himself. It also includes a selection of Evan's visual collages, which are shared publicly for the first time.