Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect a change in performance date.
Trombonist Rick Parker often travels to Shanghai with his wife, a college professor who studies internet gaming and youth culture in China.
When he’s there, Parker seeks out local musicians. More often than not, he ends up playing with Europeans, Australians and fellow Americans — musicians, in other words, with backgrounds in Western musical traditions.
“I’m all the way over in China, and I’m playing with Americans,” Parker says. “I’d rather have something that’s more of an interesting cultural exchange. I live in New York and I’m already playing with so many interesting people here.”
Parker, an eclectic improviser and bandleader, has brought a wide range of acoustic and electronic sounds to collaborations with Tim Berne (in 9Volt, a quartet that released the album “Open Circuit” in 2012); guitarist Todd Clouser; drummers Tim Kuhl and Ravish Momin; and many others. Parker appeared on “Legendary Weapons,” a 2011 compilation album by hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. Little Worlds, Parker’s chamber trio that performs inventive takes on pieces from Bela Bartok’s Mikrokosmos, performed in New Haven in 2014.
A couple of years ago, Parker hooked up with Li Daiguo, a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Dali, in Yunnan Province, who also uses vocal techniques, including beatboxing and Tuvan throat-singing.
“Our first time playing together, we were not plugged into anything,” Parker says. “We just played acoustic, the two of us. I thought that we both came ready to just respond to each other, rather than show each other what we could do. It felt very communal.”
The collaboration led to “Free World Music,” a collection of seven improvisations that will be released by Eleven2Eleven Records on Saturday, July 9. Parker and Li perform at Never Ending Books in New Haven at 8 p.m. that day, with violist Katt Hernandez opening.
The first four tracks of “Free World Music” come from a session at Brooklyn’s Degraw Sound that took place on Oct. 30, 2014; the final three were recorded at Fishman Studios in Dali six months earlier, on July 13.
“I was trying not to bring my whole jazz background or Western musical background,” Parker says, “just really trying to communicate sonically and be open to hearing what he has to say and respond to that. It felt very egoless, what we were doing.”
The seven tracks range in length from three to 12 minutes. Li performs on pipa, a Chinese stringed instrument, and cello — acoustic, though more recently he began incorporating electronics. With his voice, Li creates beats and spins out long, high tones and short motives.
Parker plays processed trombone Bolsa Bass and Pocket Piano synthesizers (built in Brooklyn by Critter & Guitari). The music is modal; improvisations hover around static tonal centers, building interest through spontaneous melodies, shifting grooves, the juxtaposition of acoustic and electronic timbres and the use of dynamics.
“A lot of the western Chinese folk music … is very static, drone-type stuff,” Parker says. “[Li] spent some time in Africa studying kora music and plays mbira [an African thumb piano] also. The folk traditions of music that he studies are drone-based and very static.”
As a composer, Parker says, “I’ve always put some pressure on myself to pull away from that static modal sound, because it’s really what I go right for. I think the meditative quality to it and the ability to just sit with it is something that I really love, and I know [Li’s] into that, too.”
One self-imposed challenge for Li and Parker is how to balance composed and improvised sections. (Before we spoke, I was certain “Make Way for the Mane of Spit and Nails,” the arpeggio-heavy second track on “Free World Music,” was composed out in advance: Not so.)
“We’re trying to fuse the two of those without doing it too forcefully,” Parker says, “because the second we try to write a song or something that’s like very specific, for me — I think for both of us — it kind of ruins the vibe that we try to create. It’s walking that middle ground.”
After the sessions for “Free World Music” wrapped in 2014, Parker traveled to Yigong, in southwest China, where Li had organized a weeklong artist residency — seven days of composing and rehearsing, capped off with an hour-long performance.
Later this month, a stateside stretch of shows (including the New Haven appearance), Parker says, represents a kind of “fourth stretch” of playing together, and he expects the collaboration to continue well into the future.
“We’ve been developing our concept of how we want to play together and how we want to organize the music together,” Parker says. “We’re not trying to be too literal. It’s obviously based around improvisation, but we were working out more talked-about guidelines and some certain sonorities and timbres and ideas to focus on.”
RICK PARKER AND LI DAIGUO perform at Never Ending Books in New Haven on Saturday, July 9, at 8 p.m., with Katt Hernandez opening. Suggested donation is $10. neverendingbooks.net.
