Playing to the galleries

at the council has done it again, assembling a bill for three days

of din that is almost unparalleled. Almost.

Attentive listeners and readers will be aware that the Tolbooth Theatre in Stirling has been the venue for challenging but astounding performances by Ground Zero and Death Ambient, groupings at the outward edge of the music spectrum who rarely find themselves on these shores and never outside of London.

Next weekend the mixture includes Japanese turntable terrorist Otomo Yoshihide of Ground Zero in the trio ISO with Sachiko Mtsubara and Ichiraku Yoshimitsu, Peter Blegvad of recently-reformed Slapp Happy in another trio with Chris Cutler and John Greaves, and Sushil Dade's experimental soundscapery with Future Pilot AKA and Mount Vernon Arts Lab.

Beginning with Manchester sound-manipulators V/V/M a week today, the programme also includes two performances that will also be available in Glasgow at the Centre for Contemporary Arts - performance poetry from Neil Sparkes and Saul Williams and solo saxophone from Evan Parker.

Parker's return to the Sauchiehall Street venue brings back memories of its earlier incarnation as the Third Eye Centre, when jazz promoting body Platform used to programme wild free improvising musicians into the studio space and attract a faithful audience of chin and beard-stroking gents in bad jumpers.

The youthful mixed-gender crowd that will hopefully flock to Stirling, however, has an earlier model, as Parker recalls in

a there-is-nothing-new-under-the-sun sort of fashion.

Some 30 or so years ago, the students of Edinburgh College of Art - and particularly Graeme Murray, who now runs the Fruitmarket Gallery, and Alan Johnston, who now exhibits his work internationally and was recently featured in Scotsfest in New York - regularly brought Evan Parker and his colleagues in

the Spontaneous Music Ensemble to gig in Edinburgh. The musicians reciprocated by having the artists design their record sleeves.

Parker remembers when these invitations came to an end. ''There was a three-day festival that also featured people like Han Bennink and Peter Brotzmann. It was great but it lost so much money that the other students rebelled.''

The link with the visual art community in Scotland was forged, and Parker has found that most of his invitations to come north have continued to come through the arts community, most recently to deliver an open lecture at Glasgow School of Art.

Parker also frequently finds himself playing in galleries, partly because he has become renowned as a virtuoso solo performer who has made the venue and its particular acoustic an integral part of his approach.

''I started playing solo in 1974 and it has been part of what I have done ever since. It is important to mix it with regular group playing - if you did it all the time, you'd get very lonely. It is very inward looking and you need to get recharged from outside - that's how the solo stuff develops.

''But I've nothing against being known for that - it is good to be known for anything.

''Art galleries often have exactly the right kind of acoustic. I like working with the resonances of the room, finding areas of sound that the room favours.''

Before he catches the unintentional boasting and hastily

retracts, Parker's next utterance

is: ''I've done some remarkable things.'' But

that is exactly true.

In spaces as diverse as the tiny Club Room near his Islington home or

a chateau in

the Loire valley, Parker has played Pied Piper to entranced listeners. The latter he remembers as his most elaborate gig. An audience gathered in a courtyard to hear him

serenade them over a balcony before he led them on an extensive tour of the policies.

Parker is exhilarating to hear, not least because his facility with ''circular'' breathing means that the customary end-of-phrase gaps that occur in the playing of most saxophonists are noticeably missing. Like many European improvisers his music can also be very gentle, however. That is not an accusation often levelled at Japanese improvisers and when Parker plays on the same evening as Otome Yoshihide, the comparison will be compelling. Parker concedes that while free improvisation might seem the ultimate global language, there are real dialectical variations.

''There are different shades of emphasis according to cultural origins even within Europe, and America and Japan have very different preoccupations and styles. I think British audiences can relate more easily to

British musicians.''

Parker, recently returned from

a sojourn in Chicago and in demand all over the world, is in a good position to judge, but he is conscious of how small the world he inhabits has become. ''It's just one scene now - it has grown to be completely different, and has grown in the number of

people who want to play it. But it will always be for a minority. It demands a lot of the audience but you always hope

for a performance that transcends the difficulties.''

Adds Parker: ''It shouldn't be an esoteric ritual that anyone is excluded from. We are working at the limits of what can be music but it is conviction and skill that carry the day.''

n Le Weekend begins on May 29. Parker and ISO play the Tolbooth, Stirling on Sunday. Call 01786 473544 for details. Parker is at the CCA, Glasgow on Friday 29 and Saturday 30. Neil Sparkes and Saul Williams perform there on the Friday.