William Parker

On June 21, AUM Fidelity will release two new and distinct album works by William Parker, each as full of beauty and truth as ever. They will be made available on CD, digital, and in limited LP editions. Cereal Music is Parker’s first spoken word album, with sound design by producer/singer Ellen Christi. Heart Trio is a centering / balancing music album created together with long-time compatriots Cooper-Moore & Hamid Drake.

On June 18, William Parker will be celebrated for his LifeTime of Achievement at Vision Festival 2024. This opening night of the festival will feature performances by Parker and his compositions in a number of ensemble settings, tellingly of either all-new work or great recent vintage. The full program of this night is still in process of finalization, but will be posted soon. The entire Festival will take place June 18–23.

Vision Festival was launched in 1996 as an essential annual showcase for creative music – presenting in focused real time whole chapters of human music theretofore insufficiently charted in the annals of history. William Parker’s music & spirit has always been a key component thereof. He has been an ever-present pillar of inspiration for numerous generations of creative music now – practitioners and listeners alike – beginning on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 70s, and then spanning the globe. We imagine that the main reason this long-standing annual Vision accolade has not previously been bestowed upon him is because William and festival founder/director Patricia Nicholson are married (49 years this May!). But now, at 72 years of age – still keeping an exceptional creative pace though inescapably on the same mortal clock as we all are – it is finally time.

AUM Fidelity was launched by producer Steven Joerg in 1997; William Parker’s work and the ethos he characterized was a foundational inspiration. The thorough commitment to create this new recording label coincided with William’s desire to begin focusing energies on his own work as a composer-leader. AUM has been a principal source of Parker’s now profound body of work on record ever since. Far-ranging in form, and vast in scope, over 50 William Parker albums as a leader or co-leader have been produced by AUM Fidelity or in tandem with him for his own Centering Records imprint since our launch. Many of them have been received as masterworks. All of them are suffused with a devotion to the healing properties of organized sound. A detailed discography is included below.