THE MUSICAL avant-garde is an area where creative people who have earned wisdom through a lifetime of experience can flourish. Wadada Leo Smith, who last year at age 80 released six sets of records comprising 20 albums in all, and Henry Threadgill, who won the Pulitzer Prize at age 72 and has released four albums since then, are two of those creative people. William Parker, voted Artist of the Year in the JazzTimes 2021 Critics’ Poll, is another.
Last year, Parker—who turned 70 in January—dropped an opus, Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World. This 10-album set includes music for solo piano, solo voice, sound collage, string quartets, flute ensembles, and vocal-fronted ensembles. He also released two trio albums, Mayan Space Station and Painters Winter. And he played on JazzTimes’ 2021 Album of the Year, James Brandon Lewis’ Jesup Wagon.
Parker’s music is truly and fully grounded in the idea that music exists to make the world a better place. He believes that musicians should make themselves the best possible vessel for that energy of betterment. He doesn’t aspire to sainthood. But he does aspire to be a catalyst for human change. He’s a living example of why free jazz exists. We use the word “free” because that’s what we want to be. We say “jazz” because we need to meet the problematic aspects of the world (which here include the use of the word “jazz,” which I did not use when I interviewed him) face to face, where they are, and engage with them for the purpose of change.
William Parker grew up in what was then, 50-plus years ago, considered the United States of America’s worst ghetto, the South Bronx. Today it is still the poorest Congressional district in the country. The fact that the poorest neighborhood in the country is located in America’s financial capital, New York City,
