HEART TRIO: William Parker, Cooper Moore & Hamid Drake

Heart Trio is William Parker, Cooper-Moore, and Hamid Drake — three of the most important figures in creative music, united by over thirty years of deep collaboration. Their debut album, Heart Trio (AUM Fidelity, 2024), was released to widespread acclaim.

Parker plays guembri, shakuhachi, duduk, and bamboo flutes. Cooper-Moore plays his hand-crafted ashimba, bass diddley-bow, fretless banjo, and mouth-bow. Drake plays frame drum (primary), drums, and percussion. All music is collectively improvised at the moment of creation.

This is music for sunrise and sunset. Healing, centering, daily music. According to William Parker, Cooper-Moore, and Hamid Drake, this is music tuned to a cure for any ailment — more spiritual than physical — through sound. Longtime accomplices reunited since 2012 in the quartet In Order to Survive, they explore here a connection to ancestral African and Eastern music, adopting instruments such as the ngoni, the shakuhachi, the duduk, or instruments created by themselves, generating mesmerizing music with an intense connection to the earth.

“The theory behind this music is the music itself. Empty and fill the heart and soul with sound, letting it dance. Without pretense. We are trying to get to a flow — Earth, sky, and flowing water sounds that jump out of the painting.”