Elysium Furnace Works presents William Parker Performer

William Parker (Jazz Bassist)
William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City. He has recorded over 150 albums, published six books, and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists. He has been called “one of the most inventive bassists/leaders since [Charles] Mingus,” and “the creative heir to Jimmy Garrison and Paul Chambers...directly influenced by ‘60s avant-gardists like Sirone, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva.” The Village Voice called him, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time” and Time Out New York named him one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time.” He has been a key figure in the New York and European creative music scenes since the 1970s, and has worked all over the world. He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Peter Kowald, and David S. Ware, among many others. William Parker works all over the world, but he always returns to New York’s Lower East Side.
Joe McPhee (Saxophonist)
Joe McPhee began playing trumpet when he was eight, before learning other instruments. McPhee taught himself saxophone at the age of 32 after experiencing the music of John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman. Jazz musicians with whom McPhee has recorded or performed include Ken Vandermark, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Jeb Bishop, The Thing, Clifton Hyde, Jérôme Bourdellon, Raymond Boni, and Joe Giardullo. Since 1998, McPhee, Dominic Duval, and Jay Rosen have performed and recorded as Trio X. In the 1990s Dominique Eade and McPhee had a jazz ensemble called Naima. Awarded the Resounding Vision Award by Nameless Sound in 2005 and, in 2018, was the first recipient (along with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn) of the Instant Award in Improvised Music.
Cisco Bradley (Biographer)
Cisco Bradley is Associate Professor of History at the Pratt Institute, editor of the Jazz Right Now blog, and author of Forging Islamic Power and Place: The Legacy of Shaykh Da’ud bin ‘Abd Allah al-Fatani in Mecca and Southeast Asia.