William Parker

William Parker, born in the Bronx in 1952, is an American double bassist, multi-instrumentalist, poet and composer, and for four decades a central figure of free jazz in New York. He came up in the loft scene of the 1970s, spent the 1980s in Cecil Taylor's groups, then anchored the David S. Ware Quartet and led his own Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and In Order to Survive. His playing rests on a tradition of self-expression and experiment; his arco work, dense streaks of colour drawn from the harmonics of the instrument, is the most personal side of his idiom.