POW! (Pick Of the Week): Evan Parker

For the next week and a half, British avant-garde saxophonist Evan Parker will hold court at the Stone in Alphabet City. I don't know Parker's music that well, but I do know that the more adventurous corners of the jazz world revere him as an uncompromising elder statesman. (Time Out jazz critic Hank Shteamer gives a brief introduction to Parker and his Stone residency on his blog, Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches.)

Many of the shows in the Parker series this week sound promising: tonight's duo with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, tomorrow's hit with saxophonist/trumpeter/valve trombonist Joe McPhee, and Sunday's benefit concert with John Zorn and the aforementioned Courvoisier. My pick of the week, however, is Parker's Saturday night bill with pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker, leading figures in the downtown free jazz sphere. Shipp and Parker formed half of the David S. Ware Quartet, the avant-garde supergroup of the 90s and early 2000s, which would turn chestnuts like "Autumn Leaves" into demon-summoning incantations. (I've always thought the group's intellectual precursors were Jimmy Garrison's frantic bowed solo on "Pursuance" from the live version of A Love Supreme and Ahab's harpoon benediction toward the end of Moby-Dick: "Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!") Don't be alarmed if you see Queequeg and Tashtego drop by for the late set.