Jazz Condition -- UPI Arts & Entertainment

Last weekend William Parker and The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra held the premiere of the "World Peace Suite."

The event took place at The Center, located in Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street in the heart of New York's Little Italy. The three-night multi-media program also included dance pieces highlighted by Patricia Nicholson's PaNic troupe.

Parker, the visionary bassist whose impact on contemporary jazz frequently has been compared to that of Charles Mingus, and his partner Nicholson are the founders of what has become the most important avant-garde jazz festival in the world, the Vision Festival, which holds its eighth renewal this year May 21-26.

Parker is involved in several group projects, including his own small band, a group with the brilliant pianist Matthew Shipp, and the avant-garde super group backing tenor saxophonist David S. Ware, a giant on the contemporary jazz scene. The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra is Parker's big band, and its versatility is stunning.

The group features a saxophone front line of Rob Brown, Ori Kaplan, Daryl Foster, Dave Sewelson, Sabir Mateen and Charles Waters that alternates reed combinations of alto, tenor and baritone saxophones and clarinet; trumpeters Lewis Barnes, Roy Campbell and Matt Lavelle; trombonists Steve Swell, Alex Lodico, Masahiko Kono; Dave Hofstra on tuba; Andrew Barker and Guillermo E. Brown on drums; and Parker on bass.

The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, performing for the first time since last year's Vision Festival, showed the power and audacity of Parker's conceptions in full flower. The epic-length "World Peace Suite" took three nights to perform in its entirety. Part I is titled "Landscapes in Disharmony," Part II is "Blues for the People" and Part III is "Uprising."

"Blues for the People" especially recalled the harmonic monumentality and relentless swing of Mingus' blues-based works. The hour-long piece built from a gently swelling pulse through sections of brass and reeds pitted against each other in subtle gradations, to fiery saxophone duets at the center, and a gradual building of shout choruses that gave way to an elegiac arco bass solo from Parker just before the coda resolved the action.

Parker was a whirlwind, playing with astonishing intensity on an acoustic bass throughout the piece. His playing, a combination of drive powerful enough to challenge and push the entire ensemble and, by turns, poetic subtlety, recalls Mingus' virtuoso capabilities on the instrument.

Each night the work of two choreographers/improvisers also also featured.

Yoshiko Chuma's "Improvisation 2," with Rob Brown accompanying on flute and saxophone, was a stirring evocation of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chuma's interactions with Brown, as she implored him with tortured gestures to evoke sounds appropriate to the horror of nuclear devastation, were spectacular. At the end of her piece she converted the two-fingered sign used to represent the two bombs into a peace gesture in a particularly powerful moment.

Parker on bass and Joe McPhee on tenor saxophone played musical accompaniment for Nicholson's PaNic company as the trio of Nicholson, Treva Offutt and Osamu Uehara performed "In the Eyes of a Child." Offutt in particular was impressive, singing and dancing the lead role.

Parker also has made a significant contribution to Shipp's groundbreaking work in the Blue Series, which has sought not just to transcend but to obliterate the delineation among jazz, hip hop and ambient music. Shipp has deconstructed his playing to its most basic melodic elements, stripped the harmonic structure of his compositions to the point where he is playing a new kind of modal groove music that places equal emphasis on the drone and autonomy of the beats.

Shipp's own "Equilibrium" and the amazing exchange with Antipop Consortium, "Antipop Vs. Matthew Shipp," demonstrates how far Shipp has come with these experiments. The two albums actually work well together back-to-back, with Shipp, Parker and Khan Jamal on vibes making up the core group on both discs.

"Equilibrium" begins on a contemplative note with a fugue-like piano melody from Shipp, who is joined by the shimmering tones of Jamal's vibes, Parker's sonorous bass accompaniment and delicate percussion from Gerald Cleaver. "Nebula Theory" employs Parker's wonderful arco technique in an otherworldly exchange with Jamal.

On "Anti-Pop Consortium vs. Matthew Shipp," Parker's evocative bowing is featured once again on "Coda." Parker, Shipp and company truly are making music for the new millennium. If this music is any kind of preview, this year's Vision festival should be spectacular.