I love this king of stuff. I think it gives artists the freedom to convey something which could not be conveyed inside traditional music structures: true art. It parallels with poetic right.

The detail that each of those musicians is performing is mindblowing. While playing the soprano sax i know that to have such a soundpallete on your playing requires much much practice time and more and even more musicallity. Guys, it can't get more musical what these musicians are doing, hats off!

Evan is awesome and so is this video.

Brings back many happy memories! Me, Joe and the boys used to sing this one round the campfire.

Gorgeous. Parker is just incredible.

wonderful. thanks for sharing. i think that this is beautiful. and i am NOT lying to myself.

Love Evan's circular breathing at the beginning - amazing how closely they follow each other - Christ!

very amazing all the best

essentially, you are parading your close-mindedness! excellent!

this guy is phenomenal

wow, I sounded like that the very first time I played the sax! Wow!

Spine tingling, ear tingling, spirit piercing, slap on the back followed by a steaming double expresso, wake up, outside the box is a universe that is vast and incomprehensible but linked and attuned to itself in patterns and connections polyphonically speaking....listen to it all - again.

Some feedback for youtube. Frankly, if we're listening to a piece, and we click on 'view all comments', we surely do not want to be directed away from the very piece we are reading comments about. Keeereist. Oh, and Parker afficiandados, you should have seen his performance at The Ironworks in Vancouver last February. Solo soprano sax, playing maybe 20 notes per second non-stop for some 15 minutes. Spellbinding and unforgettable.

this is awsome evan parker is on of the best soprano players ive ever, right heard up their with coltrane

At least you can dance to it...OK...nice dinner music with that special someone!

I've actually been pretty open-minded about it enough to research it for quite a while. Surprisingly, Bailey said in his book that this art had nothing to do with Dadaism, or any of the avant-garde. Read it. As far as my being closed-minded, Confucious say: "Not good to be too open-minded...your brain fall out". :)

Evan Parker has amazing technique and sound. He's not interested in playing "music," but is instead interested in playing all the sounds that a soprano sax can make, not just the conventional ones. Very good stuff. Please listen to some of my music at my myspace page under Heath Watts or Grass Hair Duo, if you like free jazz/improv.

this is what a bad acid trip sounds like

Well, I do sincerely apologize for my earlier very rude and offensive remarks, and especially to wd45 who posted this video. Yes, that was what was cowardice. I've since bought and read Derek Bailey's book (I highly recommend it, even for non-fans!) "Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music"; and I love the CONCEPT behind free-improvisation. (continued)

Pardon the typos. That's 'aficianado' when not hammered out whilst annoyed.

No, it is tony levin a great drummer worth checking out, he is from the uk. check out this site to hear some of his stuff. raremusicrecordings co uk

el vivo diablo sin armonia ni sentido demelodia simplemete la expresion de un alma desordenada en sus emociones pobres ! que jazz ni que nada!

I just personally need something to 'anchor' the music (like drone notes as one example) just a little bit, of course without it prohibiting the artists' freedom of expression. Yet, there's another thing though: upon listening to the video again a few times more, I can hear trickles and traces of bebop, modal and free-jazz, early-twentieth century art music, and the blues. (continued)

@helluvagun um, John Zorn does some things similar to this... Also, Peter Brotzman and Anthony Braxton (piano, Cecil Taylor..). There are hundreds of imporvising musicians at this level - alive or dead, those are just some of the "big" ones. Also, this is very close to a great deal of experimental 20th century classical music. I don't think this has anything to do with being hip - no one knows who these musicians are! (unfortunately). Most jazz musicians don't even know who Evan Parker is :(.

i can't understand, why people here on youtube cannot leave things to people who love them. it's so easy and cheap to insult here... by the way: what tanked the popularity of jazz, was rock'n'roll, not the so-called avant garde. and remember: ellington, parker, mingus, coltrane... every single one of them, even armstrong, was avant garde at his time.

bellissimo! Data della registrazione?

This improv doesn't strike me as that good honestly. I really like Evan Parker, but I think they weren't really connecting here.

that's interesting...

Such is the case, I just can't see how this music/style can be, or is really 'free' of any and all genres, which is supposed to be it's intension: to be 'non-idomatic'. (continued)

well, that was... interesting.

the issue is that no art can be truly free unless the person performing the artform has amnesia--marcel duchamp's desire to live without memory

Also, Bailey didn't like the idea of, or at least his free improv, being labelled 'avante-guard music'..which at least up until that point in time (between 1962-76) cannoted serialism, tape-loopages, electronic experimental music, soundscapes and the like. He also didn't like the idea of free-improv being mistaken for/lumped in with 'chance music', like that of John Cage's.

Just because there is a saxophone in it doesn't make it jazz. This is classical avante garde. (Classical has improvisation as well).

@SteveTheCart AHUhUHAUHUAHuHAUhuHAUhUAHuHUAhUHAuHAuhUAHahhahaHUAHuhAuhahaha

i wish that the comment section of youtube would actually be a place for intelligent discourse where people could really learn from one another.. informing others as to the aesthetics for certain kinds of art. youtube comments is a refuse dump for the worst kind of adolescent bullshit because one thinks they have anonymity.

When I saw the first five seconds of the video (before they started playing), I was expecting their performance to be amazing. It wasn't really. It was sorta edgy and unique, but it mostly hurt my ears. I love jazz, but when I saw this, the only thing I could say was: "do not want."

Yeah...with Nina the Pinhead and Joe the Void BELTING out the chorus

No

Avant Garde is more about expression than it is conformation to musical norms. I would not call this musical at all. I don't enjoy it. I still understand that like all other music, it is an artists expressions and still can be categorized as music because it uses instruments and such as tools for expression.

I'm truly broadminded but this is not tasty! Would like to know, as a comparison, what all of you who like this listen to, apart from this! Seems to me that a lot of you can stand just about anything to be hip!

While I can see the jazz influence in this piece, I don't particularily like it. It is too "free". I don't doubt that both musicians are talented. There is something appealing about rythmn and some semblance of melody.

WHAT THE HECK?!?! it sounds difficult, but it still is not very appealing.

the devil live without harmony or sense simplemete demelodia the expression of a disordered soul poor emotions! that jazz or anything!

its cowardice.. and its also uninformed fearful subjectivity. maybe if bkratler or others of this sort actually had some sort of informed intelligent opposition to such forms of expression that they could articulate then maybe their opinions would actually have some value. GUYS.. YOURE NOT SAYING ANYTHING. SAY SOMETHING. STOP BEING COWARDS

Noise. And uninteresting noise, at that. I hope people who don't know better don't hear this and think it's jazz.

feelin a little cranky? your anaylsis is pretty empty and oversimplified. first of all.. THIS ISNT JAZZ!! i know these fellows are inspired by jazz music but it certainly isnt the basis for the music they make. the fact that 'jazz has tanked in popularity' has little to do with the free community.. i'd say a big part is the fact that jazz is no longer socially relevant. jazz is dead.. long live jazz!

Worst thing I ever heard!!!!!!

hahaha do you really think anyone cares? get a life buddy