Study with a piano master like Kenny Barron and you’re then simply ready for the world. Barron is living wisdom and to even just be in his presence means absorbing a skill of artistic command. He looms over the genre and casts his command over the keyboard.
Aaron Parks studied with Barron. His is his own kind of command at the keyboard. He started to play the instrument at an early age and his leap into the world of the giants was equally as fresh. Parks freshly landed in, and played in, Terrance Blanchard’s band; an experience of sitting in and making music cool with a cast of the music’s explorers and far-reachers. Music is an experience of sound and silence; space and then no space, and playing one off of the other. This is also how an ensemble communicates. Parks has a unique command of space and no space bringing it alive with nuance and subtlety in improvisation and creative composition.
Like the composition of color and light in a photograph, Parks finds play in variances of depth and sound.