Legendary improviser returns to Arnolfini 55 years after first visit

Back in 1970 the fledgling Arnolfini Gallery first decided to extend their activities into live music.

In April that year their second ever event featured the Music Improvisation Company, a radical free music group led by legendary experimental guitarist Derek Bailey.

The band also featured the young Bristol-born saxophonist Evan Parker, at 26 years old already a rising star in London’s vigorous free music community.

Over the next few years the latter would become recognised as one of the UK’s most accomplished improvising players, collaborating with many of the greatest free musicians of his times.

One defining feature of his success was Evan’s developing technical skill, especially on the soprano saxophone. His unique style became mind-bogglingly complex, using circular breathing to sustain a continuum of sound equivalent to two or three players for minutes at an end.

Despite the physical demands the approach requires he remains very much active and, now in his 81st year, he will return to the Arnolfini – 55 years since that debut visit – with Trance Map+, the ongoing project based on his duo with electronic sound designer Matt Wright. 

When Bristol 24/7 caught up with him, however, he was quick to correct a misunderstanding about his early years, namely that he first picked up a saxophone as a child in Bristol: “This is mistaken – I left Bristol at the age of nine to live on the margins of Greater London, near what was becoming Heathrow (Airport). I started to learn the saxophone when I was 14.”

It was the subsequent discovery of the powerful music of John Coltrane that inspired the young Evan to explore improvisational music in the 60s. This led him to London’s famous Spontaneous Music Ensemble where he would first meet many of the crucial figures in that scene. Over the following decades his lengthy discography shows a dazzling list of great collaborations, primarily jazz and improvising stars but also a few unlikely ones like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Scott Walker and PIL bass player Jah Wobble.

Unlikeliest of all, perhaps, was his appearence on comedian Vic Reeves’ one and only album I Will Cure You. How did that come about? “I think the producer (Paul Morley) asked (improvising luminary) Steve Beresford to make some arrangements to make up an LP to go with (Reeve’s) unexpected hit cover of Dizzy.  I was a Vic Reeves fan and was hoping to meet him but he overdubbed his part at a different session – including the famous “Pack it in Parker!” (shouted by the comedian at the end of Evan’s free jazz solo).

Asked if there are any other jazz players he would like to have performed with, however, he is philosophical: “Leaving aside the Gods – (John) Coltrane, (Eric) Dolphy… Having played with Cecil Taylor, Milford Graves, Paul Bley, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and other stellar beings, I can’t complain.”

Alongside those partnerships in duos, small groups and the occasional big band Evan developed his solo career, something he describes as ‘a complete liberation and a prison of (my) own making!” His relentless self-discipline continues to fuel an endless quest to develop and extend his technical and musical abilities through rigorous practice. He summarises this approach: “All practice should be based on defining and solving specific problems: tone, range, note sequences, memorisation skills.  All is directed towards a sense of complete oneness with the instrument.”

That intense focus was extended in Trance Map, the duo started in 2008 where co-conspirator Matt Wright uses electronica to process and feed back Evan’s spontaneous performance, weaving it into a collaged soundscape of samples, scratchings and field recordings. This in turn is extended by the addition of other musicians in Trance Map+, a flexible membership that led to 2022’s ambitious TransAtlantic TranceMap.

That spectacular session, part of the celebrations in his 80th birthday year, saw a live stream of seven musicians in Faversham, Kent using sound and video links to improvise simultaneously with six others in Brooklyn, New York. The almost hour-long performance, dense and intricate, was released on the False Walls album Marconi’s Drift. Asked if he ever briefs the players for these sessions, however, Evan has a prompt and clear answer: “We only choose people who do not need any instruction!”

Much has changed in the context of and reception for improvised music since those groundbreaking experiments of the 60s and Evan is obviously aware of that: “There is a bigger audience now and, thanks to the recordings, there is an interest in the history of its development. Having been involved in recordings which are treated as seminal has been an important factor in my continued survival as a player.”

But of course the other vital factor has been Evan Parker’s continued health, strength and commitment to playing. At 81 years old might he be contemplating retirement? The question elicits another prompt and clear response: “The only reasons to stop would be ill health or a loss of control. For the moment all is well and I am looking forward to the Arnolfini.”

Trance Map+ featuring Evan Parker, Matt Wright and sound artist Filipe Gomes appears at the Arnolfini Gallery on Friday November 7.

Read next:

• Bristol’s month in jazz – November 2025
• Bristol’s month in World Music – November 2025
• Bristol’s month in metal and prog: November 2025
• Bristol’s month in Folk and Roots – November 2025