Present Time (BYNK #002)Press Release

The past, present, and future of jazz brilliantly coexist on Present Time, the second album by tenor and soprano saxophone virtuoso and visionary composer Matt Parker. A follow-up to his acclaimed 2013 debut, Worlds Put Together, the present disc consists of seven Parker originals, one old standard, and a previously unrecorded tune by the late, great Charles Mingus. And whereas Worlds Put Together found the leader surrounded most of the time by bass, drums, piano, guitar, and alto saxophone, he now blows his horns in the spare company of just bass and drums—played by Alan Hampton and Reggie Quinerly, respectively—with vocalist Emily Braden added on three tracks and Jerome Jennings shaking a tambourine on another.

Few saxophonists have internalized so much of the instrument’s history in jazz as has Parker. In his playing, one hears echoes of Ben Webster’s gentle and brutish sides, Lester Young’s lyricism, Sonny Rollins’s unfettered imagination, Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s adventurousness, and the types of extended techniques associated with John Coltrane and Albert Ayler.

“Parker has arrived on the creative music scene a fully formed artist—one with his own unique voice and singular vision,” Hrayr Attarian wrote in his All About Jazz review of Worlds Put Together. The critic also noted that the saxophonist’s compositions “are conceptually crystallized, complete yet free-flowing and raw works that pack a visceral and intellectual punch.”

The new CD opens with “Noah’s Arc,” a swinging groove blues featuring Parker on tenor that he has reworked from an earlier composition to partially exemplify his philosophy of “present time.” “There are many meanings behind ‘present time,’” he explains. “I’ve always liked the idea of stretching time, to be able to visit the past knowing everything I know now. One change I made was to manipulate the blues form. The song is basically in two parts. You have an elongated blues that modulates to a traditional 12-bar blues.”

The deceptively simple “New Horizons” is based on two related melodies that Parker plays as written but with much rhythmic and tonal variation throughout. Parker and Quinerly begin it as a soprano sax-and-drums workout reminiscent of Coltrane and Elvin Jones before Hampton joins in on arco bass. “Much of my improvisation is focused on imagery—it’s not in the notes that I play but in the sounds we create. I’m playing very few notes outside of what I wrote on that piece,” Parker says. “I think very visually, especially when I describe the song to Reggie and Alan.”

The trio, with Parker back on tenor, is joined by Braden for the lovely “Winter’s Gone.” “I love working with vocalists,” the leader says. “Once Emily starts, she never stops. It lends itself to time and the fact that the seasons wait for no one.” 

“One for Duke,” with Parker on soprano, was inspired by a YouTube video of Duke Ellington, in 1966, playing his composition “The Shepherd (Who Watches over the Night Flock).” He was on piano, with bassist John Lamb and drummer Sam Woodyard, at the Fondation Maeght museum in the South of France, as Spanish artist Joan Miró looks and listens.

The oft-recorded “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You)” was first popularized by Louis Armstrong in 1930. The present lightly swinging version features Braden’s warm alto pipes and Parker’s big-toned tenor. “I’m in love with Louis Armstrong and Lester Young, and this gave me an opportunity to play one of my favorite songs by them,” he says.

Prior to being recorded by Parker on tenor, the lullaby-like “Song to Keki” had no title and had been heard only in 46- and 20-second versions played by the composer on piano for his then-5- year-old daughter Carolyn (nicknamed “Keki”) in the documentary film Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968. Parker, who has been playing with the Mingus Big Band periodically for the past year, was given permission by Sue Mingus to record it and she named it after her late husband’s child.

At times during Parker’s arrangement of the song, he, Hampton, and Quinerly all seem to be flying off in different directions while the underlying pulse remains steady. “One of the things that I am very fond of that appears in Charles Mingus’s music is elasticity—the idea of stretching the time,” the saxophonist explains.

“It was emotional for me,” he adds. “With such limited content to work from, I put everything into trying to be as honest and sensitive to recording a Charles Mingus composition that hadn’t been recorded before.”

The song “Present Time” finds Parker (again on tenor), Braden, Hampton, and Quinerly switching between 7/8 and 7/4 time signatures as they speed and slow down. “It’s the idea of watching the second hand or not watching it,” Parker says of the concept. “When you’re watching the second hand, it’s moving quite slowly. Sixty seconds can feel like forever. If you look out your window and watch the trees blowing in the wind, maybe that same 60 seconds flies by.”

“The Gong” was totally unplanned before Parker arrived at Brooklyn Studio to record the album. He spotted a gong, hit it, loved the tone, and asked to have it set up and miked in front of him and the two saxophones he had around his neck, thus giving the sound of the horns a natural reverb. He strikes the gong with a mallet before each of his two free-form solos, the first on soprano, the second on tenor. The final note finds him blowing both horns at once as an homage to Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Present Time closes with Parker on tenor playing the first song he ever wrote, “Sixteen,” inspired by the summer he spent gigging in New Orleans when he was 17. He can’t remember why he titled the song as such and, in keeping with his unique philosophy of time, decided not to change it. The bouncing second-line beat is enhanced by Jerome Jennings, best known as a drummer with Sonny Rollins and Christian McBride, on tambourine.

Matt Parker was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on March 9, 1979. Misbehavior led to him being grounded when he was 14, although his parents allowed him to join an after-school band. Oboe, bassoon, and alto saxophone were the only instruments available. He chose the alto because it “looked cooler.”

With many months left of punishment, he had plenty of time to practice at home and he got good fast. He soon joined a marching polka band called the Mummer, then a dance band called Sentimental Journey. Having switched to tenor, he took his horn along on a high school trip to New Orleans and ended up getting hired for the summer to play 10 hours a day, six days a week at The Gazebo Cafe, a restaurant and bar next to the French Market. Older musicians in the band introduced him to such local musical luminaries as Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, and Ellis Marsalis.

He moved to New York City in 1999 and enrolled at the New School, where his classmates included Hampton and Quinerly, with whom he has played frequently ever since. Among his New York mentors wereJunior Mance, Jane Ira Bloom, Reggie Workman, and Charli Persip. Parker was a member ofMaynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau Band from 2004 to 2006 and made his debut recording as a soloist on the album M.F. Horn VI: Live at Ronnie Scott’s.

Besides performing with his trio at Cornelia Street Cafe and Nublu, both in New York City, and subbing in the saxophone section of the Mingus Big Band at the Jazz Standard, Parker has toured internationally for the past five years with Hess Is More, a band led by Danish drummer and composer Mikkel Hess that plays, in Parker’s words, “disco punk jazz.” The saxophonist has also appeared around the Big Apple withBeastie Boys rapper and guitarist Ad-Rock and drag-king comedian Murray Hill and was seen playing saxophone in the television series The Real Housewives of New York and the motion picture John Wick.

Making Present Time without the presence of a piano or guitar to supply chord changes for his saxophones was a challenge for Parker. 
“It’s a lot of responsibility for me,” he says. “I’m constantly trying to become more precise about what it is I’m trying to say, to be able to present an audience something that is as close to what I hear as possible.” 

The stunning musicianship and compelling compositions heard on Present Time provide proof positive that Parker has more than met his goal.