Two of the greatest contemporary African-American musicians – William Parker and Hamid Drake – immerse together in the musical depth of John Coltrane and his masterpiece “A Love Supreme”, marking the 50th anniversary of his death.
This is the idea behind A Love, Naked that with a most fascinating beat and jazz history roots wants to strip the album to its core, its spiritual and rhythmic roots. Only double bass and drums: a fresh and ritual approach to this work that doesn’t want to be a tribute but a true artistic gesture in the best traditions of jazz.
Fabbrica Europa conceived this project with Art & Network on the occasion of the participation in the Festival 2017 of the Belgian company Rosas with famous choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Salva Sanchis, who created together a touching and refined choreography on the music of Coltrane. Hence the need to tackle the masterpiece album using an approach strongly linked to the human aspects of the relationship with the “supreme”. A vision that naturally approaches certain animism of the African roots that are present in blues and in its most authentic derivations of jazz.

William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City. He has recorded over 150 albums, published six books, and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.
Parker’s current active bands include the large-band Little Huey Creative Orchestra, the Raining on the Moon Sextet, the In Order to Survive Quartet, Stan’s Hat Flapping in the Wind, the Cosmic Mountain Quintet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore, as well as a deep and ongoing solo bass study. His recordings have long been documented by the AUM Fidelity record label and on his own Centering Records, among others.
Over the decades, Parker has developed a reputation as a connector and hub of information concerning the history of creative music, recently culminating in a two hefty volumes of interviews with over 60 avant-garde and creative musicians, Conversations I & II.  He is also the subject of an exhaustive 468-page “sessionography” that documents thousands of performances and recording sessions, a remarkable chronicle of his prolificness as an active artist.
He has been a key figure in the New York and European creative music scenes since the 1970s, and has worked all over the world. He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Peter Kowald, and David S. Ware, among many others.
William Parker works all over the world but he always returns to New York’s Lower East Side, where he has lived since 1975.

Hamid Drake was born in 1955 in Monroe, Louisiana, and his family moved to Evanston, Illinois when he was a child. He started playing with local rock and R&B bands, which eventually brought him to Fred Anderson‘s attention. Drake worked with Anderson from 1974 to 2010 including on Anderson‘s 1979 The Missing Link. At Fred Anderson’s workshops, a young Hamid met Douglas Ewart, George Lewis and other members of Chicago‘s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Another of the most significant percussion influences on Drake, Ed Blackwell, dates from this period. Hamid‘s flowing rhythmic expressions and interest in the roots of the music drew like~minded musicians together into a performance and educational collective named the Mandingo Griot Society, which combined traditional African music and narrative with distinctly American influences. Don Cherry, who Drake first met in 1978, was another continuing collaborator.
Now touring and recording all over the world and in constant demand everywhere, Hamid Drake has played and/or recorded with Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders,Fred Anderson, Herbie Hancock, Archie Shepp, bassist William Parker (in a large number of lineups), Reggie Workman, Yusef Lateef, Wayne Shorter, Bill Laswell,David Murray, Joe Morris, Evan Parker, Peter Brötzmann, Jim Pepper, Roy Campbell, Sabir Mateen, Rob Brown, Marilyn Crispell, Johnny Dyani, Dewey Redman, Joe McPhee, Adam Rudolph, Hassan Hakmoun, Joseph Jarman, George Lewis, John Tchicai, Iva Bittová and almost all the members of the AACM.

a Fabbrica Europa and Art & Network production
in collaboration with MetJazz Prato

At the end of “A Love, Naked”, Stefano Zenni, artistic director of MetJazz, will give a talk on John Coltrane.