These giants of improvised music have been collaborating on various projects for more than three decades, and since 2012 they have been playing in William Parker’s revived quartet In Order to Survive. However, as a trio, these old companions made their debut album only last year. They will present this album, entitled Heart Trio, on the Vilnius Jazz stage.

According to the musicians, this will be more than just a simple performance. The trio poetically refers to their collective work as “music for sunrise and sunset, for everyday life, tuned to a cure for all ailments (more spiritual than physical)”.

Exploring a connection to the ancestral African and Eastern music, using authentic instruments from these regions as well as instruments created by themselves, these virtuosos seem to be challenging the technological boom that is increasingly taking over the world with the determination to turn homo sapiens into easily exploitable data sets.

The members of Heart Trio believe in the healing power of music and its ability to maintain inner balance in a turbulent world filled with the exponential effect of increasingly grotesque inequity, a thorough disregard for the sanctity of life, a world where wars instigated by adept manipulators continue unabated.

William Parker is best known to Lithuanian jazz audiences as a free jazz double bassist. In 2012, the Vilnius-based record label “No Business Records” released a collection of his early recordings (1976–1987) as well as the double bassist’s performance in Vilnius with the quartet of American saxophonist David S. Ware.

For several decades, this artist has been part of the global elite of improvised music, not only as an exceptional bassist, but also as a prolific composer, band leader, multi-instrumentalist, and educator. He is also an essayist, author of books on philosophy and poetry, researcher and expert on the history of improvised music.

The musician captivates audiences with his consummate technique, not only when playing the double bass solo or in various ensembles – it seems that he is at home with any instrument he picks up. Traveling around the world, he has accumulated an impressive collection of instruments, which he skilfully uses to enrich the sonic element of his concerts. Parker is particularly fascinated by Eastern cultures and has long played the Japanese shakuhachi flute and the African ngoni, both of which will be featured in this concert.

The virtuoso has released over 150 albums as the leader of projects of various genres and hundreds more as a sideman. Parker grew up in New York. At the beginning of his career, he collaborated closely with free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor – in the early ‘70s the two performed a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. Later, Parker became the pianist’s regular bassist. Parker left Taylor in ‘90s and began working more as a project leader.

Together with renowned choreographer, dancer, and poet Patricia Nicholson, the musician founded the Improvisers Collective in New York and played in its various line-ups; led the Little Huey Creative Music Ensemble big band.

The breadth and depth of Parker’s work is truly impressive: he composes music for solo instruments, large and small ensembles, vocalists, dance and film projects, multimedia operas, and writes librettos for musical productions. All of his works embody his own concept of ‘universal tonality’ and open up wide vistas for performers’ improvisations. Parker also pays tribute to the legends of Black music in his projects. 

He has toured and recorded albums with Cecil Taylor, Milford Graves, Don Cherry, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Rashied Ali, Charles Gayle, Jimmy Lyons, Billy Bang, David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, Sonny Murray, Jemeel Moondoc, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Enrico Rava, Craig Taborn, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, and other jazz luminaries. The artist has also collaborated with poets Amir Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Miguel Pinero, David Budbill, Fred Moten, and Anne Waldman.

The veteran of free jazz continues to amaze with his creativity and energy. 2021 saw a release of 10-disc collection of instrumental and vocal suites, which he composed and recorded between 2018 and 2020, inspired not only by free jazz, but also by African, Asian, and European musical traditions. A year later, he released an album dedicated to Cecil Taylor, recorded together with trumpeter Enrico Rava and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Parker leads masterclasses and residencies at universities in the US and Europe.

Time Out New York magazine included him among the 50 greatest New York musicians of all time. In 2013, Parker was the recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Award for his outstanding contributions to contemporary jazz, and in 2024, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Vision Festival.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and multimedia artist Cooper-Moore visited the Vilnius Jazz festival in 2014, inviting audiences to travel across the Dark Continent with his band Digital Primitives. 

The unusual biography of this unique artist began in a typical way: as a child, he played the piano in churches in his native Virginia, later earned a B.A. in Music Education from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and studied composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

However, after moving to New York and renting a loft, Moore immersed himself in experiments with artists from various fields. In addition to playing keyboards in New York clubs, he began making musical instruments from various types of paper, bamboo, metal, and wood waste, and playing them in lofts, galleries, museums, other art venues, and on the streets of New York.

“If I didn’t have anything to play on, I would make an instrument within a few hours,” Moore has said. He most often plays his own constructions: the xylophone-like ashimba, a horizontal harp, a mouth bow, a three-stringed banjo, and a bass diddly bow. These homemade instruments have been exhibited in New York on numerous occasions.

The artist collaborates not only with free jazz musicians, but also with theatre artists and dancers. He has developed projects with an ecologist, played in the experimental trio Triptych Myth, worked as a music therapist, and is involved in teaching. After Parker invited him to join the group In Order To Survive, Cooper-Moore returned to piano improvisation and began touring extensively in Europe and the US.

One of the most prominent percussionists on contemporary jazz and improvised music scene, Hamid Drake, has captivated Vilnius Jazz audiences on numerous occasions: in 2022, he presented his project dedicated to his inspiration Alice Coltrane on this stage, and a year later he performed with Shabaka Hutchings and Majid Bekkas.

All stars want to play with Drake because of his creativity and inexhaustible arsenal of fascinating instruments, ethnic colours, rhythms and genres. He is not only a great jazz master, but also an expert in oriental percussion and Caribbean rhythms, blending many cultural influences and genres, as well as Eastern and African flavour, into his music.

The artist has collaborated with William Parker on countless recordings and projects – this duo is rightly considered the catalyst of New York’s Black Avant-Garde.

The stage and recording studios brought Drake together with Pharoah Sanders, Marilyn Crispell, Misha Mengelberg, Wayne Shorter, Malachi Thompson, Archie Shepp, Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, Matthew Shipp, David Murray, Michael Zerang, Bill Laswell, Mats Gustafsson, Sylvain Kassap, Toshinori Kondo, and many other jazz greats. 

Drake was born in Louisiana and later moved with his family to Illinois, near Chicago. There he played drums in rock and R&B bands until he met saxophonist Fred Anderson, who became his long-time stage partner.

With Anderson’s group, the drummer recorded his debut albums, got acquainted with influential members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an important driving force behind the Chicago experimental music scene, and began to expand his ventures. 

In 1978, Drake began his landmark partnership with free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry (1936-1995), whom he calls his teacher and inspiration alongside Ed Blackwell, Alan Rudolph, and Max Roach.

Later, Drake’s list of partners was joined by Herbie Hancock, Jim Pepper, Pierre Dørge, Kent Kessler, Ken Vandermark, and other prominent improvisers. As a project leader or co-leader, he has made his mark on numerous albums released on various record labels.

In 2022, poll of critics of the legendary DownBeat magazine voted Drake (not for the first time) the best drummer of the year.