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New York reedist Ned Rothenberg plays duets tonight with British improvising saxophone legend Evan Parker over at Elastic, reprising their duo appearance at the Empty Bottle back in April of 2000. Bill Meyer’s recent Critic’s Choice focuses on Parker, but don’t forget Ned. As Rothenberg writes in the liner notes of the recent two-CD set The Lumina Recordings (Tzadik), which collects the three solo albums he made for his titular label in the early-to-mid 80s, Parker was an important influence on his own playing: “I immediately realized that he was making use of a sonic language that could give the solo saxophone context unprecedented range,” he writes of hearing him for the first time. Like Parker, Rothenberg excels with lengthy pieces using extended technique — circular breathing, advanced multiphonics, slowly developing phrase permutations — that are informed by a wide variety of nonjazz approaches, from the singing of Inuit Eskimos to the shakuhachi playing of Japanese Zen monk Watazumido-Shuso (Rothenberg added the instrument to his own arsenal back in the mid-80s).
