Oliver Lake & William Parker - To Roy (2015)

The unfortunate impetus for the album To Roy, was the sudden, tragic and untimely death on Jan. 9th, 2014 of trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr. at age 61, leading to a recording session a mere five days later marking the first-ever studio collaboration between these two crucially important pioneers of ecstatic jazz, two great American musicians and two masters of composition and improvisation saxophonist Oliver Lake and double bassist William Parker. After playing a concert at The Stone in NYC as part of Intakts January 2012 festival, Mr. Lake and Mr. Parker took up the labels outstanding invitation to record their first album together following the passing of Mr. Campbell, a long-time musical cohort and friend of Mr. Parker. Both musicians contributed compositions shaped by their many decades individually and collectively blessing the world with their beautiful, intimate, thrilling and spiritual improvisations in combination with their sense of grievous, incomprehensible loss and joyful remembrances of their friend, colleague and brilliant musician.