Fat Kid Wednesdays & Evan
Parker
Photo by Guy Le Querrec
"The obvious motto of Fat Kid Wednesdays: liberty, equality, brotherhood."
François Tusques - Jazz Magazine
FAT KID WEDNESDAYS
One French critic described Fat Kid Wednesdays as the "incarnation of the exact hope that jazz can be in its full force and meaning in a nowadays troubled world."
As opposed to the (so well) established ideas that jazz would not have any future unless outside its borders, the three musicians of Fat Kid take the crazy risk to "believe" in the virtues of the eternal regeneration of this music. Rejecting most of the options of those who carry on playing jazz as a "game" (mannerist distanciation, academic deference), the Fat Kids find naturally some essential values (lyricism, vital energy, commitment) and sign a music that is so strongly anchored in the present that it touches timelessness. It is in this vein that the group offers their first studio recording, The Art of Cherry.
Michael Lewis, Adam Linz and JT Bates, three “kids” from the Twin Cities, met at school and began to create Fat Kid Wednesdays while they were very young. Without ulterior motives and with a freedom that one had thought forgotten, the three fellows are making great the evenings at the Clown Lounge, an old joint of the Prohibition years that now sees the young guard of the Twin Cities, shining. If each of them has other occupations (Michael Lewis plays with Happy Apple, Fog and Red Start, Adam Linz with George Cartwright and Oliver Lake, JT Bates with Anthony Cox and the drum & bass group Poor Line Condition), Fat Kid Wednesdays is their basis, the place of the oath of those young musketeers.
At the Sons d'Hiver festival where they offered their first European concert, the proof was dazzling and the audience refused to let them go, encoring them on and on. French legend, pianist François Tusques, asserted at the gig that he "didn't know that people were still playing like that, with that fervor that lighted so many jazz heroes."
EVAN PARKER
Among Europe's most innovative and intriguing saxophonists, Evan Parker's solos and playing style are distinguished by his creative use of circular breathing and false fingering. Parker can generate furious bursts, screeches, bleats, honks, and spiraling lines and phrases, and his solo sax work isn't for the squeamish. He's one of the few players not only willing but anxious to demonstrate his affinity for late-period John Coltrane.
Parker worked with a Coltrane-influenced quartet in Birmingham in the early '60s. Upon resettling in London in 1965, Parker began playing with Spontaneous Music Ensemble. He joined them in 1967 and remained until 1969. Parker met guitarist Derek Bailey while in the group, and the duo formed the Music Improvisation Company in 1968. Parker played with them until 1971, and also began working with the Tony Oxley Sextet in the late '60s.
Parker started playing extensively with other European free music groups in the '70s, notably the Globe Unity Orchestra, as well as with the trio and quartet of the Orchestra’s founder, Alexander von Schlippenbach. Parker, Bailey, and Oxley co-formed Incus Records in 1970 and continued operating it through the '80s. Parker also played with Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, other groups with Bailey, and did duet sessions with John Stevens and Paul Lytton, as well as giving several solo concerts. Evan Parker has also collaborated with various bands of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts and English singer Robert Wyatt. Parker's albums are milestones of real jazz history.
Fat Kid Wednesdays invites Evan Parker
