Arborescence Aaron Parks

• 1Asleep in the Forest04:15
• 2Toward Awakening06:16
• 3Past Presence04:28
• 4Elsewhere07:04
• 5In Pursuit05:33
• 6Squirrels02:22
• 7Branchings05:09
• 8River Ways03:07
• 9A Curious Bloom03:24
• 10Reverie04:17
• 11Homestead03:59
• Total Runtime49:54

Info for Arborescence

'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 Pärt 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. Listen close and one can hear Parks whispering part of a melody along with the piano, as if he were playing at home alone, for himself. This is contemplative instrumental poetry that “often felt less like conscious intention,” he says, “and more like something half-dreamed, half-remembered.”

'Park's sound is as softly precise as a Tord Gustavsen's, as devastatingly rhapsodic as a Mehldau's; as complex and opaque as a Jason Moran's; and as detailed as a Vijay Iyer's. Above all there's a defiantly natural element to his sense of flow both in terms of harmonic progression and compositional narrative he shares with all these top players. That's why Arborescence is such an exhilarating, and startling, record: one of the year's very best jazz albums to date.' (Stephen Graham)

Aaron Parks, piano

Recorded November 2011 Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA
Engineered by Rick Kwan
Mixed at Avatar Studios, New York
Produced by Sun Chung

Aaron Parks
Born in California in 1983 and raised in Seattle from age 3, Parks is a former prodigy now in full artistic bloom. By age 15, he was already attending the University of Washington with a triple-major in math, computer science and music; three years later, he was the champion Cole Porter Fellow of the American Pianists Association. Parks appeared on three Blue Note albums by trumpeter-composer Terence Blanchard before making his own album for the label as a leader with the quartet set “Invisible Cinema” – which BBC Online declared “one of the great albums of 2008,” describing the pianist as “a master of melody, and a composer and arranger of protean skill and dexterity.” Parks has also recorded in the ongoing collective James Farm with saxophonist Joshua Redman, as well as contributed to albums by guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, trumpeter Christian Scott, vocalist Gretchen Parlato, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, drummer Kendrick Scott, trumpeter Philip Dizack and guitarist Mike Moreno, among other leading musicians. The Guardian has lauded Parks’ “independent vision,” calling him a “fast-rising star.” The New York Times has praised the pianist for being “a step ahead of everyone else.”

Booklet for Arborescence