Great Spirit by William Parker / Raining On The Moon

[AUM098]

William Parker: bass, compositions
Leena Conquest: voice
Rob Brown: alto saxophone
Lewis Barnes: trumpet
Eri Yamamoto: piano
Hamid Drake: drums

Great Spirit is a direct companion to the album, Corn Meal Dance:
https://aumfidelity.bandcamp.com/album/corn-meal-dance
These works/this band make abundantly clear all at once William Parker’s multi-faceted talents as composer, bassist, bandleader -&- songwriter. Raining On The Moon is the extraordinary group vehicle which seamlessly fuses all of these prodigious gifts: his long-standing Quartet with Hamid Drake, Rob Brown, and Lewis Barnes, exquisitely augmented by pianist Eri Yamamoto on expert chordal support ++ , and singer Leena Conquest breathing further compassion & dignity into William’s lyrics.

Going back a few years.. Corn Meal Dance [AUM043] is one of the most beautiful, potent, luminous, and true albums of all-original song ever made. The indelible melodies and rhythms; the words, unyielding and uplifting in equal measure; the performances by all six musicians; the recording quality itself. All are strictly top shelf.

The January 2007 studio session which yielded that album was extraordinarily productive. All of the material was mixed and mastered for release, though only nine pieces made the final track list. Great Spirit presents the entire balance of that work [plus a few choice bonus tracks]. The release of this additional material was ultimately prompted by Raining On The Moon’s invitation to perform at the Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2015.

>> Also To Note >>
William Parker’s deeply moving poetry put into beautifully voiced song, within a wide range of creative music approaches, is one of the features of the concurrently released 3CD box set: For Those Who Are, Still -&- is likewise spotlighted in piano & voice duo via Stan's Hat Flapping In The Wind. All of these great works were posted on bandcamp in January 2018, in order to help start the year out right, honoring the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the last great American teacher-leaders of the wisdom class.


"4-Stars. Regardless of his close association with significant figures in the avant-garde, above all Cecil Taylor and David S. Ware, bassist-bandleader-composer Parker is also, it can be rightfully claimed, a soul artist. Or rather a musician who understands the importance of the blues as a root of all modern black music. While that was made most explicit by the Curtis Mayfield tribute album he recorded several years ago, this set by his longstanding Raining On The Moon ensemble underlines the fact with a collection of quite beautiful songs. First and foremost the melodies, well served by Leena Conquest's gilded voice, stand tall in a Curtis-Rosetta-Sam Cooke gospel-fired lineage, and at times, as on "Doson Ngoni Blues", there is a distinct undertow of Bill Withers. But Parker's trump card is an ability to organically weave in elements of free improvisation and double-time swing into this emotionally rich thematic base without it sounding either incoherent or contrived. The net result is a band that brings together small group jazz sensibilities and an R&B vocabulary, albeit acoustic rather than electric, that has a depth of feeling to match all the musical finesse." –Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise


* Full art & notes included as PDF booklet with Digital Album.

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And this highest-recommendation-read feature article published in Mail & Guardian, the esteemed South African journal. It was written by well-respected writer on arts and culture, Gwen Ansell, on the aforementioned occasion of William and this group's appearance at the Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg.

[Google it >>>

William Parker: Back to bass licks
by Gwen Ansell
18 Sep 2015
=Inspired improvisation: William Parker’s music
cannot be contained by commonly used labels.=

It's a great piece and I also loved how Gwen decided to end her long-form article with this extract from WP's poem Music Is:

“Music is dance and the dancer. It is poetry and the poet.
Music is all children. Music is hot cornbread.
Music is the kindness one finds in a crayon drawing.
Music is wood touching word. Imagine a doorbell made of light. Imagine the house that we would enter if we rang that bell.

“Music is the rhythm of butterflies.
Music is hungry stomachs being filled.
Music is justice.
Music is blue water, blue whales, and blue cornmeal.”

is a master musician–improvisor–composer–bandleader–griot–shaman–poet–community leader.

Featured here are the premier works produced for both AUM Fidelity & his own Centering Records imprint, along with select additional works otherwise not readily available.

portrait by
Jimmy Katz

aumfidelity.com
williamparker.net
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