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High-Energy Improvising with an Ever-Shifting Cast

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The saxophonist Evan Parker projects an intensely concentrated energy through his music. Now 65, he has spent more than 40 years in the trenches of the British avant-garde, metabolizing the ideas of free jazz and perfecting his own strategies of sound, which skew atonal but often lyrical. Hes hailed as a virtuoso of extended techniques circular breathing, multiphonics, sculptured overtones and lionized for his solo excursions. Hes also a tireless collaborator, secure in his footing and perpetually primed for engagement.

Since the beginning of this month Mr. Parker has been performing two sets nightly at the Stone, with a different partner or set of partners each time. The series, proposed by his fellow saxophonist John Zorn, the proprietor of that compact East Village club, has been received in certain circles as a momentous event. The overflow crowd on Tuesday was partly made up of repeat visitors, including a few who said they hadnt missed a note.

Tuesdays late set involved Nate Wooley, an astute, adaptable trumpeter, and Chris Corsano, a fast and perceptive drummer. It divided naturally into five pieces, each roughly stamped with a beginning, middle and end. The dynamic range stretched from near silence to thundering clamor, with a lot of rhythmic motion: Mr. Parker, playing tenor or soprano, enlisted a fast-scrawling cadence with intricate patterns. Except for the fourth piece, in which Mr. Wooley blurted a bit of fanfare inspired by the free-jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, there were no ingratiating gestures, nothing to set off a spark of recognition.

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