Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy is an album by the American jazz double bassist William Parker, recorded in 1995 and released on Homestead.
The album is the third part of a sound trilogy including the sextet In Order to Survive and the solo bass Testimony. In Order to Survive is the name of the ensemble, a quartet with Rob Brown on alto sax, Cooper-Moore on piano, and newcomer Susie Ibarra on drums. "Unrestricted" is a piano-drums duo dedicated to saxophonist Julius Hemphill. "Goggles" is dedicated to bassist Earl Freeman. "For Robeson" is for Paul Robeson. "Malcolm's Smiles" is for Malcolm X. The cover art is a "MusicWitness" painting made during live recording by Jeff Schlanger.[1]
In his review for AllMusic, Don Snowden states "Slack moments are rare and the evenly balanced contributions of all four musicians make this a fine example of freewheeling collective improvisation."[2]The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that compared with the previous album the tracks "are more developed and feature some of the bassist's very best writing."[3] In a double review for the Chicago Reader, Peter Margasak says that Parker's original compositions "employ a variety of melodic and structural gambits toward a single goal: highly sensitive and all-enveloping improvisation."[4] In an article for the Boston Phoenix Ed Hazell notes that "Each track is a cathartic cry from the heart, complex, yet with utter clarity of structure."[5]
