William Parker Releases Box Set of Solo Bass Works

William Parker has put out a limited edition box set of his works, Crumbling in the Shadows is Fraulein Miller’s Stale Cake. Limited to 1,000 copies, the set contains 3-discs of Parker’s solo bass albums, including his long out-of-print first solo bass album Testimony, as well as a 48-page booklet of writings.

The improvisatory and often avant garde bassist got the box set’s title from a slave owner named Fraulein Miller.

“Legend has it she was a benevolent master who would save pieces of stale cake for the slaves from time to time,” Parker explains. “This was something she was very proud of. Then one day several slaves made their way into the kitchen stealing large knives. They had made the decision to cut the throats of the overseers and escape. At the crucial moment just before bloodshed was to occur they heard the sound of a low string instrument. It was a bass being bowed and the music was like a dance but you couldn’t dance to it without listening and you couldn’t listen without feeling it. These displaced and tortured Africans held out their arms, they intertwined them like branches from a tree. Becoming unified as one voice they looked in the slave master’s eyes turning and walked off the plantation into the horizon never to be seen again.”

Preview and download Crumbling in the Shadows is Fraulein Miller’s Stale Cake:

Crumbling in the Shadows is Fraulein Miller’s Stale Cake Box Set Contents:

48-page booklet of new writings by William Parker

Disc One

1. Stained Glass Sky with Dancing Light (for Stan Brakhage)
2. Crumbling in the Shadows is Fraulein Miller’s Stale Cake
3. Equador/Resolution

Disc Two

1. Night Density
2. Double Mystery
3. Green Mountains (for Bill Dixon)
4. Philadelphia Clay
5. Velocity
6. Pointed Acceptance

Disc Three – Testimony

1. Sonic Animation
2. Testimony (for Beb Guerin)
3. Light #3
4. Dedication
   …for Charles Clark 1945-1969
   …& Albert Stinson 1945-1969
5. The Second Set