Evan Parker in The Wire

Evan Parker (Allaboutjazz)

Evan Parker is thinking back to the first time he left England when, as a 14 year old, his father took him to the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. “I know you’ll immediately be thinking Xenakis and the Philips Pavilion,” he teases, referring to Greek composer Iannis Xenakis’s electronic composition Concret PH, premiered in the pavilion alongside Edgard Varèse’s Poème Électronique. “But what you probably won’t know is that Sidney Bechet also played at the same Expo. In that same short visit I heard Bechet and I hear Xenakis. You could say I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to make sense of those two experiences.”
Evan Parker in conversation with Philip Clark (The Wire, May 2007)

Edit:

It was Steve Lacey who famously introduced Coltrane to the soprano saxophone and by doing so led a to a revival of its fortunes. I’m sure that neither Kenny G nor Evan Parker would be playing soprano were it not for that fact. However, and interesting, additional fact is that I heard Sidney Bechet play soprano in Brussels, at the Expo in 1958. That was the first time I’d ever been outside of England. And I also heard Xenakis’ electronic music for the Philips Pavillion I leave it to you to work out quite what effect that combination of influences may have had!
‘Coltrane’, a talk by Evan Parker (Point of Departure, August 2006)

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