INSTRUMENTS OF COLOR /AUTUMN CEREMONIES Jerome Cooper – cherimia, balaphon, keyboards; William Parker – double reeds, doson ngoni, bass shakuhachi

Jerome Cooper’s fruitful musical legacy with the Revolutionary Ensemble and stints with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and others reads like a who’s who in cutting-edge jazz. Nowadays Cooper’s polyrhythmic drumming and multitasking persona are prime factors in his mesmerizing solos. Wonderful combinations of Indonesian gamelan, West African timbres, jazz kit and garage band electronics surprise and merge in a satisfying post-everything style.

William Parker As Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe stated in July 2002, “William Parker has emerged as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz.” He works with many of the more important groups in this genre, some of the most prestigious being his own, including The Curtis Mayfield Project, Little Huey Creative Orchestra, In Order to Survive, and William Parker’s Quartet. In 1995 the Village Voice characterized William Parker as “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” He has performed with Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, Billy Higgins, and Sunny Murray, among others. In 1980 he became a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, in which he played a prominent role for over a decade. Parker has released over 20 albums, most of them hitting #1 on the CMJ charts.

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