Evan Parker

"If you can imagine the music of the future, why is it in the future?"

-- Evan Parker

Radio 3's Jazzfile is running a three-part documentary on the music of the free-improvising saxophonist Evan Parker.

This week's programme discusses his early period in the sixties. Among other groups, he plays with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and then with the Peter Brotzmann Octet, on their album Machine Gun, which is furiously intense. Almost to the point of comedy.



I've got four or five of Evan Parker's albums. Like a lot of improvised music, I'd describe them as:

- on the margins of the listenable;
- driven by dogmas I don't grasp;
- unlikely to be in the CD player much;
- necessary from time to time, to blow away the cobwebs.