Aaron Parks

Aaron Parks – Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:51 minutes | 1,36 GBGenre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ropeadope Records

The band’s new recording, Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man, communicates with a clarity and simplicity that belies its ultimate depth. “I want to cast a spell,” explains Parks, “to lull you into a trance where you think you know where you’re going, and then take you somewhere unexpected, almost without realizing how you got there.”
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Aaron Parks – Find The Way (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 50:22 minutes | 926 MBGenre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

For the second ECM album by Aaron Parks – following the solo release Aborescence, which JazzTimes praised as “expansive, impressionistic… like a vision quest” – the prize-winning pianist has convened a trio featuring bassist Ben Street and drummer Billy Hart. The rhythm pair, which also teams in Hart’s hit quartet for ECM, blends fluidity and strength – what Parks calls “an oceanic” quality, producing waves of energy for the pianist to alternately ride and dive into. Find the Way has the aura of a piano-trio recording in the classic mold, from melody-rich opener “Adrift” to the closing title track, a cover of a romantic tune Parks grew to love on an LP by Rosemary Clooney and Nelson Riddle. Parks also drew inspiration for this album from the likes of Alice Coltrane and Shirley Horn (for whom Hart played); space and subtlety are a priority.
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Aaron Parks – Arborescence (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 49:53 minutes | 802 MBGenre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

“Arborescence” is the word for the way something grows, seeking and adaptive, like a tree – its roots and branches moving under and around things wherever they need to go toward water, toward the sun. Prize-winning young American pianist Aaron Parks titled his ECM debut Arborescence because the album’s music is the fruit of a session of solo studio improvisation in which little was predetermined; the pieces developed in the moment like “living things”, in the artist’s words. “The music felt as if it were coming into being and going where it had to go, in that sort of arboreal way”. It’s possible to hear fleeting echoes in this music of Arvo Part and Paul Bley, Erik Satie and Kenny Wheeler; but Arborescence is ultimately something deeply individual and intimate, recorded with the lights down low in the warm, clear acoustics of Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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