Led by free jazz bassist William Parker, the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra is an intermittently active New York-based unit that plays a kind of almost completely improvised big-band music. The instrumentation varies somewhat; on its first recording, a total of eight saxophonists, three trumpets, three trombones, a violinist, cellist, three drummers, and two bassists took part, although not all played on every cut. On other occasions, the band has been a bit smaller. Seemingly modeled on Cecil Taylor's experiments in large ensemble performance (Parker was a Taylor sideman for many years), Little Huey nevertheless maintains a character of it's own, based on the leader's conception. The band elaborates extensively on Parker's skeletal compositions. Parker directs and cues the performance in an improvisatory manner, bringing in sections and soloists according to the exigencies of the moment. Often the music borders on extreme chaos -- saxophonists out-of-tune with one another, extemporaneous micro polyphony creating a mass of undifferentiated sound -- but at its best, the band is capable of inspiring a bracing exaltation in the listener, which stems not so much from aesthetic beauty, but rather from the sheer energy and joy of creation that the band conveys. Members of the band include a roll-call of Downtown New York free jazz stalwarts; saxophonists Rob Brown, Will Connell, and Marco Eneidi; trumpeter Roy Campbell, violinist Billy Bang, and trombonist Steve Swell are just a few of the more prominent musicians aboard.

Little Huey is an outgrowth of the Improviser's Collective, a cooperative of New York free jazz musicians who, for a couple of years in the mid '90s, organized in order to present a series of concerts and festivals at Context Theater in New York's East Village. The Collective folded, but its legacy includes the Vision Festival, a free jazz event that's been held annually for several years, beginning in the late '90s. ~ Chris Kelsey, Rovi