William Parker & Ellen Christi - Cereal Music (2024)

Iconic free jazz bassist William Parker's first spoken word album, 'Cereal Music' is another collaboration with producer and singer Ellen Christi, who accompanies Parker's poetic reflections with subtle ambience and choral flourishes.

For almost five decades, Parker has provided free jazz with its beating heart (he's known as the "unofficial mayor of the New York improv scene"), performing with Cecil Talor, Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves, Hamid Drake and plenty more greats, and working prolifically as a bandleader. But until 'Cereal Music', his poems and insights have remained on the page; Parker published 'Who Owns Music?', a collection of essays and poems, in 2011, and now some of those wide-eyed observations have been given pride of place on a full album. He's been writing since he was a child growing up in the South Bronx projects, and on 'Birth' he remembers being born premature, recounting the experience of noticing the people wandering around his incubator as horns wail in the distance and Christi's funereal organs swirl around the words.

Christi has been working with Parker since 2021's 'The Majesty of Jah', and her dreamy atmospheres provide Parker with context for his stories. She doesn't always sing, but when she does, like on the serene 'Ode to Kidd Jordan' or 'Ellen and Leaves Floating', it's like bright sunlight beaming into the room. On the bulk of the album, she works with Parker's unmistakable double bass plucks and woodwind blasts, forming them around cloudy field recordings and melancholy ambience. Parker's words meanwhile are rounded and elegant, never overly florid but sensible: "Caring is not controversial, those who manufacture lies say truth is subversive" he states over Christi's angelic tones on 'Sonny'; "We have lost our identity," he deadpans over police sirens and clattering percussion on 'We Were Very Civilized'. It's a porthole into Parker's personal reality that's been put together with care and charm.

Tracklist:
1.01 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Ode to Kidd Jordan (2:06)
1.02 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Baseball (0:59)
1.03 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Birth (2:17)
1.04 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Death (2:28)
1.05 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Do Dreams Sleep (5:43)
1.06 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Ellen and Leaves Floating (6:02)
1.07 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Plea (2:46)
1.08 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Into My Heart (4:29)
1.09 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Touring (1:02)
1.10 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Sonny (5:44)
1.11 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Uninvited Guest (1:37)
1.12 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - We Were Very Civilized (3:07)
1.13 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Batala (bonus track) (1:34)
1.14 - William Parker & Ellen Christi - Windshield Wipers (bonus track) (6:00)
1.15 - Ellen Christi - Prayer (bonus track) (6:40)