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Pianist
Aaron Parks is a forward-thinking jazz musician who came to the public's attention during his time with trumpeter
Terence Blanchard. Almost since the beginning of his recording career,
Parks has assumed an intuitive union of modern jazz, Eastern modalities, and atmospheric indie rock. Comfortable with the pyrotechnics of post-bop as well as sparse, sculpted, questioning tone poems and lithe melodies both minimal and maximal,
Parks actively considers the seams where musical forms speak to one another and he articulates from there, as evidenced by his 2008 debut album,
Invisible Cinema, and 2018's
Little Big.
Born in Seattle,
Parks began playing piano at a young age, and by the time he was 14 had enrolled in an early entrance degree program at the University of Washington. Originally, he pursued both science and music degrees; however, his prodigious talent won out, and by age 16 he had transferred to the Manhattan School of Music. While there,
Parks studied with noted pianist
Kenny Barron and received several competitive accolades, including being named the 2001
Cole Porter Fellow of the American Pianists Association. At age 18, he joined
Blanchard's ensemble and subsequently recorded four albums with the veteran trumpeter, including 2003's
Bounce, 2005's
Flow, the soundtrack to the 2006
Spike Lee film
Inside Man, and
Blanchard's 2007 Grammy-winning opus
A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina). Besides playing with
Blanchard,
Parks has performed with a variety of artists including trumpeter
Christian Scott, drummer
Kendrick Scott, vocalist
Gretchen Parlato, trumpeter
Ambrose Akinmusire, guitarist
Kurt Rosenwinkel.
Parks has released several albums under his own name, including his 2008 Blue Note debut,
Invisible Cinema. He was an integral part of
the James Farm Quartet with
Joshua Redman,
Matt Penman, and
Eric Harland. Nonesuch released the quartet's self-titled album in 2011. The pianist subsequently signed to
ECM and issued the solo piano offering
Arborescence in the fall of 2013. He also made sideman appearances on
Will Vinson's Live at Smalls and
Yeahwon Shin's
Lua Ya, and Live in Japan with his own trio of
Thomas Morgan and RJ Miller. It was recorded on the pianist's phone during a show and was released for free on his Bandcamp page.
Parks cut Groovements in a collaborative trio with Danish bassist
Thomas Fonnesbæk and drummer Karsten Bagge for Stunt in 2016. He moved back to
ECM in 2017 for his sophomore label date,
Find the Way, issued in the late spring. It featured bassist
Ben Street and drummer
Billy Hart in the rhythm section and was inspired in part (according to
Parks) by the music of
Alice Coltrane and
Shirley Horn (for whom
Hart played), both of whom prioritized space and subtlety in composition and improvisation.
In 2018,
Parks released
Little Big on Ropeadope. Named after an epic fantasy novel by author John Crowley, it also served as the moniker for a new ensemble featuring guitarist
Greg Tuohey, bassist
David "DJ" Ginyard, Jr., and drummer
Tommy Crane; like
Parks, they are all musicians who refuse the artificial genre divisions between jazz improvisation, rock dynamics, and electronic textures and atmospheres. The set was mixed by
Daniel Schlett (
the War on Drugs) and longtime friend Chris Taylor, a member of
Grizzly Bear. Taking Little Big out on tour for over a year, the band re-entered Brooklyn Recording over two days in December 2019 and cut what became
Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man, a contrasting sequel with its predecessor in that after a few years of touring, their chemistry had become intuitive and direct. Whereas
Little Big had featured compositions, the latter recording focused on the band's developed "single organism" sound. It was released in May 2020. ~ Matt Collar