Parker Plays X EPK

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Photo credit for all photos: Javier Oddo

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R I C H A R D X B E N N E T T &

M A T T P A R K E R

Biography

The special partnership of pianist Richard X Bennett and reed player Matt Parker goes back to the summer of 2016, when Bennett let it be known he was looking for a saxophonist to work with—and not just any kind of saxophonist. “I asked people ‘Who is the craziest sax player you know?’” he says. A Brooklyn bandmate of his didn’t hesitate in naming Parker.

“He came over, played three bars of ‘My One and Only Love’ and that was it,” says Bennett, no shrinking violet himself on the keys. “A lot of free players can play wild without actually playing the song. It was obvious in sixty seconds that Matt had it.”

“I wasn't familiar with Richard,” says Parker. “But I wanted to meet him after being told I could play the way I like. His attitude is do what you do, don’t hold back. One time, he told me, ‘I want you to die on this song. Really push yourself.’ That's the only way I know how to play.”

The fruits of their chemistry are on full display on their new album, Parker Plays X, a wide-ranging collection of Bennett originals written with Parker in mind. Touted as a “jazz/roots song and story collection,”" the recording reflects the pianist’s love of styles including swampy New Orleans blues (à la Professor Longhair and James Booker), ’40s film noir, modern Gospel and Indian raga (on which he has concentrated in a kind of parallel career).

“I try to be groovy and free at the same time,” Bennett says. Parker can groove, but free (as in avant-garde jazz) is where he hangs his hat.

Nearly all of the tunes on the album, released on Parker’s BYNK label (Because You Never Know), run three minutes or less. That’s a shared preference between them, for aesthetic reasons and because they emerged from the pandemic itching to play a bunch of stuff. “There was space in my head for more songs,” says Bennett.

The album opens with the upbeat and joyful “Style V Substance” featuring bassist Adam Armstrong and drummer Julian Edmond. “Bus 61” begins with a very short piano/drum intro followed by a jaunty melody in three quarter time played in octaves by Armstrong and Parker, on soprano saxophone, doing their jazz heritage names proud.

“Countertransference” was inspired by Bennett’s sessions with his psychoanalyst, who to his great disappointment wouldn’t write notes for the album as Charles Mingus’s psychiatrist did for his classic The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. It’s a three-part suite that begins on a note of dark reflection and climaxes with Parker—in the role of the shrink, oddly enough—experiencing a torrential emotional breakdown on tenor.

On the Monkish ballad “Two Days Later,” written by Bennett and his wife Paula Jeanine Bennett, Parker goes deep in the manner of Ben Webster, first unaccompanied and then in stormy R&B exchanges with Bennett. “Barbaric Yawp,” which takes its title from Walt Whitman (“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”), is a gut-puncher.

Then there’s “No Cigarettes No Coffee No Weed No Sleep,” a scurrying free bop workout that reflects on the saxophonist’s decision to give up his vices—all at once. Says Bennett: “One night at 2:25 a.m., Matt called me and said ‘I’ve done it! I stopped smoking, vaping, and drinking!’ I asked him how he was feeling. He said, ‘I feel great!’ He must have talked for three hours. At a certain point, I began transcribing the cadences of his speech and a song was born.”

On the surface, Bennett and Parker couldn’t seem more different. Bennett makes fun fashion statements with his pop art outfits and colored eyeglass frames. His intent is “to give people joy.” The bearded, decidedly unflashy Parker is more of a lunch bucket artist. On his tune “Everyman Parker,” “a jovial combination of street beat and early-jazz swagger,” Bennett waxes on his frequent sightings on the street of guys who he is sure are the saxophonist—but aren’t.

The album concludes with “Sagebrush,” recorded on Zoom during the lockdown while Parker and Bennett were preparing to record with their full quartet. It’s a duo number that shows off the lyrical side of both artists.

Their collaborations tend to be less about interaction than addition. “It takes two hands to play those Second Line patterns,” says Bennett. “You need someone else topping the melody. Matt is great at that.”

“It’s a unique experience to take on someone else’s sensibility so intensely,” says Parker. “I tried internalizing Richard’s melodies and took it from there.”

What strongly bonds them is their shared willingness to try anything. Both write, arrange, and perform music for films and dance productions. Then there’s all the music they both love. “If I put a little Lee Allen on Richard, he gets really excited,” says Parker, referring to the New Orleans rock ’n’ roll legend, known for playing sax with Little Richard.

Bennett says he was anointed with the X by Charles “Honeyboy” Otis when he played with the New Orleans drummer. The first jazz artist who left an indelible impression on him was the great South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand), whom he saw in concert when he was 15.

“I memorized everything he played,” Bennett said in a DownBeat interview with baritone saxophonist Claire Daly. “I went home and started playing his music by ear. A few years later, I heard the records. I wasn’t far off, and some of it had become my own thing. Sometimes, if you learn something poorly, you will become an original.”

After moving to New York, he ranged from “blues to jazz” and also played in a Greek funk-rock band. He answered an ad from a Swiss producer who was in need of a blues pianist for a festival in Switzerland. Hired on the basis of a tape he sent, Bennett was asked to put together a band for the fest, where he performed before 2,000 people.

A turning point in his life and career came when he followed his then-girlfriend Paula, a jazz singer, to India, where she had gone to study Indian music. Exposed to the local music scene, Bennett quickly fell for ragas, learning as he went. He worked with classical singer Dhanashree Pandit Rai and recorded six raga-based albums for Indian labels.

Taking its title from Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Bennett’s 2017 jazz quintet recording, Experiments With Truth, features Parker, along with noted Australian saxophonist Lisa Parrott. It includes a song inspired by the challenges of meditating in a crowded city, “Say Om 108 Times.” Says the composer, “There’s so much chaos, but there’s also a spiritual element.” And a humorous one: New York Jazz Review called the album a blend of “the sublime and ridiculous.”

Bennett also composed a piece entitled “Chengyu” for 14 musicians based on Chinese calligraphy, having toured China for a month playing jazz.

His other domestic jazz albums include the trio effort, What Is Now (2017) and Away from the Many (2018), an experimental album featuring a cover of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” He describes it as “music for contemplation and reflection. It’s what I play when no one is listening.” In 2021, Bennett released another trio outing, RXB3.

Matt Parker grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he found his love for the saxophone. “Once I got a sound out of it,” he says, “I was hooked.”

The first jazz concert he attended was by powerhouse trumpeter Maynard Ferguson—his future employer in the Big Bop Nouveau ensemble—whose lyrical playing left a deep impression on him. He started performing in local clubs at 15 and soon found himself onstage with such notables as Ira Sullivan, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Richie Cole. In 1997, during a school trip to New Orleans, he found local musicians to play with and was hired on the spot to play six days a week that summer at the Gazebo Café in the French Quarter. Older musicians in the band introduced him to local musical luminaries including Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, and Ellis Marsalis.

He subsequently went to the New World School of the Arts in Miami, and the New School in New York where he honed his craft with some of the most talented musicians in the industry. Among his New York mentors were Barry Harris, Junior Mance, and Jane Ira Bloom. On his 2013 debut album, Worlds Put Together, featuring two of his New School collaborators, bassist Alan Hampton and drummer Reggie Quinerly, he shows off his debts to both traditional and avant-garde artists. The album features vocals and tap dancing. He stripped down to a trio with Hampton and Quinerly for his 2016 album, Present Time, which includes the previously unrecorded Mingus composition, “Song to Keki.”

For years, practicing in Brooklyn apartments, he says he was greeted by “profanities from every window and people banging on doors, floors, and walls, even when I played the softest notes. It was a torturous comedy.” He found solace in a secluded wooded area of Prospect Park and sitting on the banks of the East River where he could play to his heart’s content without interruption. Shades of Sonny Rollins practicing out on the Williamsburg Bridge.

“My desire is to push the boundaries of what the instrument can do and find beauty within the fringes,” says Parker. For him and Bennett, there is nothing more important than radiating joy through their music. Their collaboration is a testament to this philosophy, and their music is sure to uplift any listener’s spirit. •

Richard X Bennett and Matt Parker: Parker Plays X

(BYNK Records)

Street Date: May 5th, 2023

BENNETT:

Web Site: www.richardxbennett.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/richardxbennett

Twitter: www.twitter.com/richardxbennett

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richardxbennett

YouTube: http://bit.ly/2rJlKqQ

PARKER:

Web Site: www.mattparkermusic.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/CMattParker