This is a fully annotated (and generously illustrated) record of practically every time that elemental jazz double bassist-composer William Parker has ever played a gig or recording session, as a band member or leader, from 1972 clear through to June 2014. A vast microcosm of one profoundly engaged jazz musician which reveals an illuminated macrocosm of jazz itself.

Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker’s life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker’s ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker’s early influences—Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement—grounded Parker’s aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker’s understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker’s life and music.

Free Jazz: A Research and Information Guide offers carefully selected and annotated sources on free jazz, with comprehensive coverage of English-language academic books, journal articles, and dissertations, and selective coverage of trade books, popular periodicals, documentary films, scores, Masters’ theses, online texts, and materials in other languages. Free Jazz will be a major reference tool for students, faculty, librarians, artists, scholars, critics, and serious fans navigating this literature.

Cover -- LOFT JAZZ -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations and Table -- 1. Fragmented Memories and Activist Archives -- PART ONE: HISTORIES -- 2. Influences, Antecedents, Early Engagements -- 3. The Jazz Loft Era -- PART TWO: TRAJECTORIES -- 4. Freedom -- 5. Community -- 6. Space -- 7. Archive -- 8. Aftermaths and Legacies -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

In The Williamsburg Avant-Garde Cisco Bradley chronicles the rise and fall of the underground music and art scene in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn between the late 1980s and the early 2010s. Drawing on interviews, archival collections, musical recordings, videos, photos, and other ephemera, Bradley explores the scene’s social, cultural, and economic dynamics. Building on the neighborhood’s punk DIY approach and aesthetic, Williamsburg's free jazz, postpunk, and noise musicians and groups---from Mary Halvorson, Zs, and Nate Wooley to Matana Roberts, Peter Evans, and Darius Jones---produced shows in a variety of unlicensed venues as well as in clubs and cafes. At the same time, pirate radio station free103point9 and music festivals made Williamsburg an epicenter of New York’s experimental culture. In 2005, New York’s rezoning act devastated the community as gentrification displaced its participants farther afield in Brooklyn and in Queens. With this portrait of Williamsburg, Bradley not only documents some of the most vital music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; he helps readers better understand the formation, vibrancy, and life span of experimental music and art scenes everywhere.

Dial Records catered to jazz musicians and record collectors. Charlie Parker was one of the major jazz artists to record with Dial. His Dial sessions occurred at the personal depths and artistic peaks of his career during which he introduced a number of such jazz staples as Ornithology and Scrapple from the Apple. His ten sessions associated with Dial are presented in detail and include the repertory, original issues and reissues, titles and notated transcriptions, and analyses of performances. Commentary explains many of the titles to Parker's pieces and collates the various recordings in which he performed his Dial repertory outside the confines of the Dial studios; these celebrated performances helped to shape modern jazz. In addition to the catalogue of Parker's Dial recordings, jazz historians and scholars alike will appreciate the historical narrative detailing the evolution of Dial Records, its owner Ross Russell, and its business relations with Charlie Parker. This examination of the 1940's jazz record business sheds light on the dissemination of jazz via records. Five appendices complete this well organized and thorough study of Charlie Parker and his legendary Dial recordings.