Evan Parker has had a long and fruitful relationship with Canadian musicians and audiences. His first North American tour in 1978 introduced his uncanny solo soprano saxophone techniques to audiences in Toronto and Vancouver as well as affording chances for him to play with various ad hoc ensembles, including Michael Snow and the CCMC at the original home of Toronto’s Music Gallery.
Parker first appeared at Quebec’s Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) in 1988 with Anthony Braxton’s ensemble and in a reed trio with Canadian Bill Smith and German Wolfgang Fuchs. That marked the beginning of a long association with the festival that included appearances with his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, the London Jazz Composers Orchestra in 1992, and the singularly expressive Tuvan throat singer Sainkho Namtchylak in 1996. In 2003, an epic encounter that still resonates with attendees combined Parker’s trio—with pianist Alex von Schlippenbach and drummer Paul Lytton—with the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s trio, which included bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake. In 2014, he appeared in a duet with guitarist Fred Frith and led his international Electro-Acoustic Septet, featuring cellist Okkyung Lee and Ikue Mori and George Lewis on electronics.
Parker enjoyed a long association with Canadian poet Paul Haines, who wrote the liner booklet for Parker’s box set Collected Solos (Incus), originally released in 1989. Parker recorded Haines’ poem “Curtsy” with singer Robert Wyatt for the collection Darn It! (American Clavé). In September 2003, the year of Haines’ death, Parker appeared at the Guelph Jazz Festival in a tribute to the poet, which included Michael Snow, Jesse Stewart, and David Mott.
In February 2009 Parker was featured in an AIM Toronto (Association of Improvising Musicians) Interface Series at the Somewhere There performance space. In a remarkable feat of creative programming, Parker appeared playing saxophones in a series of improvising ensembles of like instruments grouped in largely classical formations: a brass quartet, a string quartet, a saxophone quartet, and a vocal trio. He also performed in a trio with John Kamevaar on electronics and Tomasz Krakowiak on percussion, and in a relatively orthodox trio with drummer Joe Sorbara and bassist Wes Neal.
Parker returned to Canada in April 2011 for a remarkably immersive Eastern Canadian tour coordinated by Productions SuperMusique, which saw Parker work with numerous Canadian musicians in their home locales. The tour started in Toronto, where he performed at a concert featuring a set with Sorbara and Neal (marking the Barnyard Records release of their aforementioned 2009 show) and including the premiere performance of Justin Haynes’ Circles Over Labrador with the AIMToronto Orchestra, in which Parker was a featured soloist. In Ottawa he played with drummer Jean Martin and bassist John Geggie; over two Montreal performances he played solo, with Sorbara and Neal, and with turntablist Martin Tétreault and saxophonists Joane Hétu and Jean Derome; in Quebec City he performed with Érick d’Orion on electronics and Luke Dawson on bass.
In Rimouski, home of the remarkable musical world created by Éric Normand, Parker played solo and with Le GGRIL (Le grand groupe régional d’improvisation libérée), resulting in the CD Vivaces (Tour de Bras). Parker gave solo concerts in Fredericton and Moncton, finally visiting Halifax, where he played solo and with cellist Norm Adams, pianist Tim Crofts, percussionist D’Arcy Gray, and trombonist Scott Thomson, who had served as a co-organizer of the tour.
Stuart Broomer has written extensively on music, mostly improvised, for both general and specialist publications, and his liner essays have appeared on CDs by musicians from some 20 countries. The author of Time and Anthony Braxton (Mercury, 2009), he is currently writing a fantasia on the life of Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips. He has been intermittently active as an improvising musician since 1965; his composition Found Theme for the Age of Reason appeared in Musicworks 112. He lives in Toronto.