After being buffeted by frigid winds and crisp sunlight while traipsing on the soft sand of an Oregon beach for several hours last Sunday, I recovered by sinking into a couch with Evan Parker’s latest release for Intakt Records.

Mentally settled and bodily exhausted, I experienced all 50 minutes of Etching the Ether without a single distraction or chemical enhancement. Completely immersed in sound, I was transported to an elevated dimension.

How did I get there? Most people never acquire a taste for improvised new music, but I consume the often harsh form as if it were candy. A moment on Live in Brooklyn 2011, a new release documenting Sonic Youth’s final concert in the United States, supplies a clue.

Thurston Moore, the loudest member of one of the most transformative bands of my youth, informs the audience that Weasel Walter is slated to perform at the concert’s afterparty at The Stone. The name-check affirms the connection between Sonic Youth’s art-punk free jazz.

The aside also brought me full circle. Since performing with a group including local standout Seth Davis in Kansas City last year, Weasel Walter is featured on the exhilarating March release Branches Choke. Etching the Ether is even better.

The quartet of Parker (soprano saxophone), Peter Evans (trumpets), Matthew Wright (electronics) and Mark Nauseef (percussion) draw on the most refined developments from Tokyo, Philadelphia and the International Space Station. As Sonic Youth might put it, it’s a late-life riot.

William Brownlee

May 13, 2021

Film Find: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

William Brownlee

May 13, 2021

Exasperated by my obsessive investigations into arcane cultural niches, my life partner recently asked “how do you find these things?” She immediately forgets about my frequent commercial hip-hop and professional sports binges when our home is overtaken by Evan Parker’s free jazz or is monopolized by the experimental films of Bill Morrison.

With an increasingly tenuous ability to differentiate between approachable and inaccessible forms of art, I was pleasantly surprised when my partner stuck around for a screening of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). The loopy 1964 French film is unlike anything either of us had encountered.

Sung-through by a cast of remarkably attractive actors including Catherine Deneuve, the lush color schemes captured by cinematographer Jean Rabier and director Jacques Demy are stunning. Every element of the romantic tragedy is captivating in spite of the preposterous premise.

Michel Legrand’s ingenious score circumvents seemingly inevitable disaster. I’d previously thought of Legrand only as the composer of “The Windmills of Your Mind.” No more. Having abandoned attempts to exterminate Les Parapluies de Cherbourg earworms including "Chez Dubourg" and "A L'Appartement", I added Legrand’s sublime soundtrack to my regular rotation. The film streams on YouTube here.

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The sixth episode of my In My Headache podcast is available for streaming. Aaron Rhodes and I ponder Flying Lotus’ Yasuke, Origami Angel’s Gami Gang and Ted Nugent’s 1975 debut solo album. Caveat: I remain annoyed by my collaborator’s decision to punk me with his selection of unflattering audio teasers.

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The notes I posted five days ago at Plastic Sax are still the sole published analysis of the Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill: Photographs by Jerry Dantzic exhibit at the American Jazz Museum.

William Brownlee

January 18, 2021

Album Review: Alexander Hawkins- Togetherness Music

William Brownlee

January 18, 2021

Original image of Evan Parker at the Big Ears Festival in 2019 by There Stands the Glass.

I regret passing on an opportunity to chat with Evan Parker during the 2019 edition of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. Parker stood with attendees on a sidewalk waiting for a venue’s doors to open for his matinee performance. More familiar with Parker’s legendary status in new music circles than with his actual work, I wasn’t yet prepared to engage in anything more than small talk with the titanic figure.

I’ve since developed an incapacitating reverence for the iconoclastic British saxophonist after listening to dozens of hours of his recordings, a tiny fraction of the 76-year-old’s canon. The latest example of his genius is Togetherness Music, a spectacularly ambitious “six-movement quasi-orchestral work” overseen by pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins. Parker’s presence acts as a lit fuse amid the combustible large ensemble that includes strings and electronics.

In expanding the outer limits of the innovations of Charles Mingus and Charles Ives, Togetherness Music blends jazz-based improvisation with contemporary classical music. I’m all in, but my enthusiasm could become problematic. Were I to encounter Parker today, I’d almost certainly embarrass myself with unhinged musings on the uncommonly fertile new ground he and collaborators like Hawkins have forged.

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I’m honored to have been asked to participate in The 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. My notes about a challenging aspect of the selection process are at Plastic Sax.