Lake/Parker: To Roy

Lake, Oliver, Parker, William

INT 243

The album 'To Roy' dedicated to trumpeter Roy Campbell, who died in 2014, is the first collaboration between saxophonist Oliver Lake and double bass player William Parker – two important pioneers of contemporary jazz, two great musicians of the USA and two masters of composition and improvisation.
After playing a concert in "The Stone" in New York, part of Intakt's festival in January 2012, Lake and Parker took up the label's invitation to record their first album together in Pater Karl's studio in Brooklyn.
Both musicians contributed compositions of rare beauty. Shaped by their long experience, their intimacy created spaces for interaction and exciting improvisations. The instruments of these two mature players mingled to create a single unique sound.

K. Curtis Lyle, Liner notes: Hear what this duo collaboration intends and does with sound! It immediately bridges the gap that excludes one art form from another. No need to look for the horizon just 'listen up'! William Parker's vertical spirit sense; the speaking, the writing, the huge heart that shares with and elevates others is evident immediately upon hearing the round depth sound of his bass. The very first eight bars of Variation on a Theme of Marvin Gaye show him extracting individual stars from the collective urn of memory. Oliver Lake, musician, painter, poet, answers / counterpoises with the sound of an eternally awakened weather Buddha map, a sorrow song that always leads home. This is a sound conversation; a call and its instant response. These men lay special logos-claim and entrance to the place that is not a place. In my mind this is the ancient, present and future definition of the shaman. The irresistible force solves the conundrum by embracing the immoveable object.

CD x 1

Intakt Records

3/2/15

7640120192433