Eddie Parker’s Airborn, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 11/12/2025.

Eddie Parker – flute, bass flute, baroque flute, keyboards, Rob Luft – guitar, Dave Manington – double bass, Jay Davis – drums

Music Spoken Here’s final event of 2025 drew a pleasingly substantial audience to the Marr’s Bar to hear Airborn, the new project of former Loose Tubes flautist and composer Eddie Parker.

Parker’s Loose Tubes lineage must have attracted some of the listeners but his band also includes the phenomenal young guitarist Rob Luft, who is something of a draw in himself and who brought his own quartet to the Marr’s Bar in 2025, a performance that is reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/rob-luft-quartet-music-spoken-here-the-marrs-bar-worcester-27-03-2025

Airborn also includes bassist Dave Manington (aka Mr Riff Raff), a bandleader in his own right, and rising star drummer Jay Davis. As perhaps befits the group’s name it’s a truly stellar line up.

I’ve been a fan of Parker’s playing since his Loose Tubes days. A founding member of the band he played on the band’s three classic 1980s albums “Loose Tubes” (1985), “Delightful Precipice” (1986) and “Open Letter” (1988). He also wrote for the band, contributing compositions to the second and third albums.

He also appears on the three archive live albums later released on LT keyboard player Django Bates’ Lost Marble label between 2010 and 2015.

Parker was also part of the band when they reformed for a series of Festival appearances in 2014, performing a mix of old classics and new material composed specifically for these events. The new tunes can be heard on “Arriving”, the third and final disc in Bates’ Lost Marble series.

The Loose Tubes performances at the Cheltenham and Brecon Jazz Festivals of that year are reviewed elsewhere on this site.

Following the initial demise of Loose Tubes Parker became a member of Bates’s Delightful Precipice ensemble, which many observers regarded as being effectively a continuation of Loose Tubes. He appeared on the Delightful Precipice albums “Summer Fruits (and Unrest)” (1993) and “Winter Truce (and Homes Blaze) (1995) and also on Bates’ earlier small group recording “Music for the Third Policeman” (1990).

The 1990s also saw Parker establishing himself as a composer and bandleader in his own right with the release of the albums “Transformation of The Lamp” (1994) and “Everything You Do To Me” (1996), both credited to the Eddie Parker Group and released on FMR Records.

The EPG later mutated into the sextet Mister Vertigo, self releasing the album “Live at The Vortex” in 2006.

In recent years Parker has led the still ongoing EscherSteps, a quartet that explores the interface between jazz and progressive rock and which also features Parker as a vocalist. These days Liverpool born Parker lives in the Forest of Dean and I recall seeing perform with EscherSteps at the Queens Head in Monmouth some years prior to the unfortunate closure of that much missed venue.

Meanwhile Airborn is is an all instrumental unit that variously draws on jazz, rock and 20th century classical music. The day before tonight’s show Airborn had completed recording its debut album, which will hopefully see the light of day some time in 2026, although quite how the band will get the recording ‘out there’ for the pleasure of the listening public is yet to be decided. On the evidence of tonight’s performance it’s going to be well worth hearing when it does become available.

During the course of tonight’s show Parker talked effusively about the Airborn band and its music. We learnt that a then very young Luft had ‘depped’ for regular Loose Tubes guitarist John Parricelli at a Loose Tubes gig at Ronnie Scott’s back in 2014 and did this so brilliantly that Parker immediately though “I’ve got to work with this guy”.

It’s taken a while for the partnership to come to fruition. Luft’s own rise in the last eleven years has been remarkable and he’s now a musician with an international reputation with several albums as a leader or co-leader to his credit. Parker may be twice Luft’s age but he clearly has a huge respect for the sheer musicianship of the gifted young guitarist. The Airborn band name even stems from a play on Luft’s surname, which is of course the German for air, as Parker explained.

Airborn began as what Parker described as “a posh covers band”, playing material composed by some of his favourite jazz musicians, among them guitarist John McLaughlin, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and pianists John Taylor and Keith Jarrett. He explained that he was fascinated by the way in which McLaughlin’s bombastic jazz rock outfit Mahavishnu Orchestra and the chamber jazz trio Azimuth (Wheeler, Taylor and vocalist Norma Winstone) often used similar harmonies but deployed them so differently. Later Parker began to write for the band, which now performs original material almost exclusively.

Tonight’s show was centred around the “Airborn Suite”, which also draws inspiration from dodecaphonic or ‘twelve tone’ music as pioneered by the 20th century Austrian composers Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. It’s a style of music that is often regarded as being harsh and challenging, but Parker also sees the beauty in it, citing Berg’s violin concerto as an example.

“We are going to take you on a journey”, announced Parker, slightly tongue in cheek, as the evening commenced with the atmospheric sounds of “Airborn Prelude”, with Parker playing a baroque wooden flute above a shimmering ambient backdrop featuring the sounds of Manington’s bowed bass, Luft’s gauzy guitar effects and Davis’ cymbal embellishments.
With Parker’s shout of “1-2-3-4” the music segued into “Airborn One”, which featured a more orthodox full band sound with Manington putting down the bow and Luft taking flight on the guitar as Parker featured on keyboards. Born into a musical family Parker began on piano before switching to the flute, a move partly inspired by the prog rock bands of the early seventies that deployed the flute, notably Jethro Tull and Focus. I’d like to think my personal favourites, Van Der Graaf Generator, might have been an influence too.

“Airborn Two” featured Parker as a flute soloist and also included an extended double bass feature for the excellent Manington. The performance was also notable for the flute / guitar dialogue between Parker and Luft.

“Airborn Three” featured Parker on bass flute, again dovetailing with Luft’s guitar. This was a piece that featured some decidedly peculiar time signatures, but these were tackled in a playful manner as Parker doubled on bass flute and keyboards, soloing on the former. Luft’s guitar solo offered another example of his restless inventiveness on the instrument.

Parker continued on bass flute for the brief “Airborn Four”, which began in ‘chamber jazz’ fashion in a trio setting with Parker joined by guitar and bowed bass. Davis’ cymbal embellishments were only added towards the close.

Parker had promised us a “little light relief” from the comparative seriousness of the “Airborn Suite” and this came in the shape of the self descriptive “Rock Latin”, which concluded the first set. Variously inspired by Jethro Tull, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Santana and Weather Report Parker and the band delivered “a more dancey, groovy ride” with solos from Luft on guitar and Parker on keyboards, the latter featuring a mix of electric piano and synth sounds. The performance was crowned by a drum feature from the brilliant Jay Davis, originally from Evesham, a local boy ‘making good’. In addition to the influences mentioned by Parker I was also reminded of the electric version of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever.

It took the audience a while to settle down as the musicians returned to the stage with the second set beginning in the same atmospheric manner as the first, with bowed bass again a distinctive component. Following the scene setting intro “To Plant A Tree” later embraced Metheny-like melody with Luft soloing on guitar, followed by Parker on electric piano and Manington on pizzicato double bass.

Parker described the next piece as being “unashamedly dodecaphonic”. Its title, “Wonky Clockwork”, was again highly descriptive, the music sounding jumpy, nervous, and unpredictable with staccato collective phrases punctuated by a series of drum breaks from Davis, some of them quite extended.

Continuing the experimental theme “Airborn Five” was performed in a 5/4 time signature, inspired perhaps by Tull’s “Living in the Past”, a hit single that was also played in five. Oh, and let’s not forget Dave Brubeck. Introduced by the combination of drums and guitar this proved to be a remarkably accessible piece that included features for all four players, with Parker on focussing on keys. The pick of these had to be an exceptional guitar solo from Luft that combined a high level of inventiveness with astonishing technique.

As a collective the members of Loose Tubes were politically committed and back in the 80s performances regularly included comments about such issues as apartheid and nuclear waste / weapons. Parker retains that commitment and introduced a composition with the title  “Cortège”,  with the words “If protesting using words, banners and flags is to be made illegal, then every note I play is a protest”, sentiments were rewarded with a healthy cheer from the Marr’s Bar audience. The piece itself was reflective of its title with an arco bass drone underpinning the sounds of flute, shimmering cymbals and eerie slide guitar. Davis used mallets to produce a slow marching rhythm, locking in with Manington’s percussive bowing as Parker gravitated between flute and keyboards and Luft adopted a synth guitar sound for his solo. The piece concluded in the same atmospheric manner that it had started with the return of Manington’s arco bass drone.

The title of the concluding “OK Quixote” was a nod in the direction of Kenny Wheeler and the latter’s famous “Windmill Tilter” suite, first released on album in 1969. This featured solos from Parker on Korg synth and Luft on guitar, their inventive excursions propelled by the crisp rhythms laid down by Manington and Davis. A free-wheeling ‘free jazz’ section then featured the leader on flute.

The reaction of the discerning Worcester audience to this intelligent, sometimes challenging, but ultimately accessible original music was overwhelmingly positive and the quartet needed no prompting to remain on stage for an encore. This saw a return to their ‘posh covers band’ days with a version of the Keith Jarrett composition “Le Mistral”, a piece that features on “Treasure Island”,  Jarrett’s 1974 album for Impulse! Records. Based around a cerebrally funky keyboard vamp this featured more exceptional soloing from Parker on electric piano and Luft on guitar, who not for the first time threatened to upstage his boss, not wilfully but through his sheer inventiveness and creativity allied to his obvious joy in music making. It was easy to see why Luft had recently been crowned ‘Instrumentalist of the Year” at the 2025 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.

A great way to round off the 2025 season of Music Spoken Here events at The Marr’s Bar. That Airborn album is going to be well worth hearing when it eventually appears.

Eddie Parker was recently interviewed by Dave Fuller of Music Spoken Here for the “Piece Talks” series. A lengthy but highly informative and entertaining chat offers a comprehensive overview of Eddie’s musical career and a whole lot more besides. It can be accessed via the Music Spoken Here Facebook page here;
https://www.facebook.com/MusicSpokenHere

DAVE FULLER of MUSIC SPOKEN HERE gives his own account of the event below;

Ending the year on a high with Airborn!

was over the moon on Thursday to see such a great turnout for our last event of the year, our biggest audience since The Boom Yeh tore the place up back in April. It was a real treat to have Eddie Parker’s Airborn perform, with Eddie being the second member of the legendary 1980s big band Loose Tubes to grace our stage following Iain Ballamy in April last year. It was also the second appearance for us this year from Parliamentary Jazz Awards Instrumentalist of the Year Rob Luft. The lineup was completed by Dave Manington on double bass and Jay Davis on drums.

It transpired later in the evening that Rob stood in for John Parricelli in some of the Loose Tubes reunion gigs in 2014, including a couple of dates at Ronnie Scott’s where I had my first and only encounter with the live band. It was that ‘meeting of the spirits’ that compelled Eddie to later work with Rob in what became Airborn - originally covering the music of Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, John McLaughlin and Keith Jarrett.

The band’s name is derived from the meaning of the guitarist’s surname in German and, with no ‘e’ on the end, conveys the idea that the music has emerged or been born in the air rather than being “carried by the air like some sort of disease”, as Eddie explained.

The first set was based around Eddie’s Airborn Suite, which the band have performed several times but recorded in the studio just a couple of days before this performance. The floaty “Airborn Prelude”, with Eddie playing a wooden Baroque flute, segued into “Airborn 1” with flavours of John McLaughlin and Mahvishnu Orchestra, featuring Rob’s enchanting guitar work and Eddie on keys. Eddie’s concert flute featured in “Airborn 2”, along with a beautiful double bass solo from Dave Manington. “Airborn 3”, with a jaunty back-beat, featured Eddie on yet another instrument, this time the bass flute.

Eddie’s love of ‘dodecaphonic’ music - compositions that use all 12 tones of the Western scale with equal importance rather than forming around a specific key - was demonstrated beautifully in the “Interlude”. The final piece of the first set was a groovy number “Rock Latin”, with Eddie acknowledging influences from Jethro Tull, Weather Report and Santana, closing out with a drum feature from Jay Davis.

The audience settled after the break as Airborn returned to open the second set with “To Plant a Tree” that included a gorgeous guitar feature, followed by another ‘unashamedly dodecaphonic’ composition, the rhythmically jagged “Wonky Clockwork” featuring Jay Davis. “Airborn 5” was a piece in 5/4 time with another feature from Dave on the bass.

Introducing “Cortége”, Eddie declared “If protesting using words, banners and flags is to be made illegal, then every note I play is a protest”. A lamenting flute melody played out over a bowed drone on the bass and sweeping electronic sounds from Rob’s guitar as a soft, sombre marching bass drum beat developed.

The set ended with “Oke Quixote”, a swinging affair in which Eddie did a solo using a synthesised flute voice on his Korg M1 before handing the baton to Rob for another expressive guitar feature.

The audience called for more and the band regrouped for an encore of “Le Mistral” by Keith Jarrett, bringing to a close a fantastic evening of entertaining and engaging music and another year of our exceptional “Kind of Jazz” program at The Marr’s Bar.

Thank you to everyone who came through for this and indeed any of our brilliant gigs this year. I’m looking forward to a bit of a break before resuming in January with another incredible program to take us through to the 2026 summer break!

DAVE FULLER

 

 

 

 

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