Evan Parker and Matthew Wright’s Trance Map project has included improvised live events across Europe and the US, involving other invited guest performers, with various Trance Map+ recordings released on psi, Intakt and FMR Records. Since 2020, Trance Map+ have undertaken ambitious streamed and networked performances, connecting with musicians around the world from The Hot Tin venue in Faversham, Kent, UK.
In 2022, this resulted in Transatlantic Trance Map, a simultaneous performance between seven musicians in Kent and six musicians in Roulette, New York City, which is profiled on this album release. Transatlantic Trance Map helps to mark Evan Parker’s 80th birthday in 2024. It is the second Evan Parker release on False Walls, following THEN THROUGH NOW by Evan and Henry Dagg (2022). In November 2024, False Walls will also release THE HERACLITEAN TWO-STEP, etc., a 4 CD set of solo, improvised recordings by Evan Parker, along with a 128 page book, including writing by John Corbett, Richard Leigh and Stephen C. Middleton; an extended interview with Evan Parker by Martin Davidson; along with writing and visual artwork by Evan Parker.
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THE HOT TIN
Faversham, UK, 8pm GMT:
Evan Parker: soprano saxophone
Matthew Wright: turntable, live sampling and processing
Peter Evans: trumpet, piccolo trumpet
Robert Jarvis: trombone
Hannah Marshall: cello
Pat Thomas: live electronics
Alex Ward: clarinet
ROULETTE
Brooklyn, USA, 3pm EST:
Sylvie Courvoisier: piano, keyboard
Mat Maneri: viola
Ikue Mori: laptop live electronics
Sam Pluta: laptop live electronics
Ned Rothenberg: clarinet, bass clarinet, shakuhachi
Craig Taborn: piano, keyboard, live electronics
“This is a most ambitious effort, two ensembles playing simultaneously on either side of the Atlantic ocean, connected through the internet and improvising through the airwaves … the sound and flow is seamless … Most impressive on all fronts.” — Downtown Music Gallery, NYC
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
