1994

Museu de Girona

Who would even think of giving sound back to Charlie Parker?

During the fifties of the last century, Bird did an incredible thing.

Almost nobody returned his sound. Can you?

If you can’t, keep listening until you can; if you don’t succeed keep listening until the end.

In his John Coltrane Piece (1968), Bruce Nauman gave back to Trane a sonorous silence, in a piece that shows great respect for someone who also did an extraordinary thing during his brief life.

Peça Parker (1994) displays this impossibility in a set-up where a microphone captures the sound made by the public, which is reproduced through the bell of a saxophone hanging some distance away.

Parker’s musical instrument listening for a possible answer that need not necessarily be pronounced.

On this occasion silence is perhaps the best option.