Jazz Vespers: Steve Swell, William Parker, Hans Tammen

NYC's unique jazz prayer service, Sundays at 5 since 1965. All are welcome. Free to attend!

This week, we welcome Steve Swell, William Parker, and Hans Tammen.

The Steve Swell Group is an improvising ensemble of world renown practitioners of this art form. All members tour worldwide and do many performances in NYC.

About Steve Swell

Steve Swell is a world-renowned improviser and composer. Having started his musical journey in
traditional jazz styles he was always interested in the “New Thing” of the 60s and 70s. After tenures with Lionel Hampton and Buddy Rich in the 1980s he then immersed himself in the creative environs of the East Village and the burgeoning Knitting Factory scene of the time.

This led to performances/recordings with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Alan Silva, Roswell Rudd, Jemeel Moondoc, Ken Vandermark, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Roscoe Mitchell, Dave
 Burrell, Elliott Sharp, Bill Dixon and Peter Brotzmann to name a few.

He has fifty recordings as a leader/co-leader and is featured on more than one 150 releases.

He was nominated Trombonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, 2008, 2011 & 2020, named Trombonist of the Year, 2008-2010, 2012 & 2014-2021& 2023 by the Argentinean journal, “El Intruso” and selected in Downbeat Critics Poll every year from 2010-2018, 2020-2024

About William Parker

William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City. He has recorded over 150 albums, published six books, and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.  
He has been called “one of the most inventive bassists/leaders since [Charles] Mingus,” and “the creative heir to Jimmy Garrison and Paul Chambers...directly influenced by ‘60s avant-gardists like Sirone, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva.” The Village Voice called him, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time” and Time Out New York named him one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time.”Sirone, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva.” The Village Voice called him, “the “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time” and Time Out New York named him one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time.”

He has been a key figure in the New York and European creative music scenes since the 1970s, and has worked all over the world.  He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Peter Kowald, and David S. Ware, among many others. 
William Parker works all over wide territory of semi-hostile discontinuity; "percussive, droning, intricately colorful, or simply blowing your socks off” (Touching Extremes).
His works have been presented at festivals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, India, South Africa, and the Middle East, and all over Europe. He has recorded on labels such as Clang, Innova, ESP-DISK, Nur/Nicht/Nur, Gold Bolus, Nachtstück, Creative Sources, Leo Records, Potlatch, and Outnow. He always returns to New York’s Lower East Side, where he has lived since 1975.

About Hans Tammen

Hans Tammen is just another worker in rhythms, frequencies, and intensities. He likes to set sounds in motion and then sit back to watch the movements unfold. Using textures, timbre, and dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear. Whether richly processed guitar sounds from his hybrid interactive guitar/software instrument Endangered Guitar, traditionally notated material for his Third Eye Chamber Orchestra, or graphically notated elements for the all-electronic Dark Circuits Orchestra, his music flows like clockwork, “transforming a sequence of instrumental gestures into a wide territory of semi-hostile discontinuity; percussive, droning, intricately colorful, or simply blowing your socks off” (Touching Extremes).
His works have been presented at festivals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, India, South Africa, and the Middle East, and all over Europe. He has recorded on labels such as Clang, Innova, ESP-DISK, Nur/Nicht/Nur, Gold Bolus, Nachtstück, Creative Sources, Leo Records, Potlatch, and Outnow.

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