Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The New Jazz, September 17, 2008
Recently, I was lamenting about the passage of many of our jazz greats due to age, sickness, etc. I told my wife that the current generation of musicians don't seem to be interested in nuturing our beloved music with taste and technical prowess. I was wrong. There is a new group of young jazz lions out there and Aaron Parks is at the front of the the pack! In fact, on a recent trip to New York City, we were lucky enough to catch Aaron and a stunningly brillient guitarist named Mike Moreno at New York's "Jazz Standard" club. The music these young men put down was all at once beautiful and intricate. I could not believe my ears. So, I purchased the Aaron Parks CD and was not let down. I've now listened to it multiple times and it keeps getting better. It is inventive and thick with excellent playing. Buy it.
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22 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
this is unusually enjoyable, September 6, 2008
One test of an album is, how many times do I want to listen to it? I listened to this one five times before I took a break. That's a lot for me. Usually I'm relieved to get through a new album so I can go back to something I really like. I switched to The Brian Blade Fellowship's Season of Changes for comparison, but I couldn't get through it before I had to go back to Invisible Cinema for another listen. There are at least four things that make this album so satisfying to me. First, there is the physical quality of the playing. Aaron Parks and Mike Moreno both have a beautiful touch, delicate, precise, and supremely confident. Second, there's a lot of variety on this album. In different places it reminds of Brad Mehldau, The Bad Plus, Radiohead, The Pat Metheny Group, world music, and more, but I like Invisible Cinema more than anything I've recently heard from these other artists. Third, Parks makes excellent use of harmonies and other ideas from progressive pop. He even gives us a great bluesy number in "Roadside Distraction" and a great folky number in "Praise." Fourth, despite the variety, the album is unified by a very strong artistic vision. Ben Ratliff in his recent "Critics' Choice" blurb questioned the clarity and consistency of Parks's leadership here, but in my opinion this is just further evidence of Ratliff's unreliability as a critic.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Parks sparks on this evocative and sophisticated album., January 16, 2009
The New York-based young talented pianist Aaron Parks has teamed up with fellow Blanchard sideman, drummer Eric Harland, plus bassist Matt Penman and guitarist Mike Moreno for this album, his first one on Blue Note: the group are a state-of-the-art ensemble, together they prove a knockout combination.
He has toured with postbop stars Terence Blanchard and Kurt Rosenwinkel, and recorded with hip newcomers such as Will Vinson and Kendrick Scott (Herbie Hancock's drummer). Now he's 25, and this is his big opening proclamation.
The album's title has its roots in Parks's feeling that his music is at once spontaneous and cinematic, and a moody drama, summed up by titles such as "Peaceful Warrior" and "Into the Labyrinth", imbues many of his compositions.
"The pianist insists there is a particular narrative in the 10-track ''sequence, song titles and everything'' but shrewdly stops there. If you are intent on discovering what the secret story in this "Invisible Cinema" is, the only place you'll find it is in the music. And what music it is!" - BBC
Parks's piano playing initially sounds light, tripping and dexterous but he packs something of a punch where necessary, and his pieces' discernible influences range from the intelligent, limber contemporary jazz of Blanchard, Geri Allen et al. to less likely sources such as prog rock.
Displaying a sovereign command of structure, Parks also leaves plenty of room for free interaction and the resulting amalgam is as thoughtfully-constructed and compelling a piece of music-making. Particularly admirable is the elegantly knowing way in which the beguiling surface simplicity of the music disguises the multi-faceted complexity beneath.
So you'll find allusions to Blues music on "Roadside Distraction", to rock music, John Zorn's Masada and...Balkan music on "Harvesting Dance".
Moreno's clean, fluent but gutsy guitar playing is very much in the current Kurt Rosenwinkel-type style, and he brings a bright spikiness to the overall band sound that perfectly complements Parks's more mellifluous lyricism.
Harland and Penman mesh flawlessly throughout, too, the drummer's brisk but delicate hip-hop-influenced pattering tattoos injecting urgency into everything the band plays.
The album confirms the promise and potential glimpsed in Parks's dozen and more outings as a sideman to the likes of Terence Blanchard, Ferenc Nemeth and Ambrose Akinmusire.
It also reveals him to be a master of melody, and a composer and arranger of protean skill and dexterity
"It's not a mere sampling of the contemporary piano scene, it's a real independent vision. Parks is a fast-rising star". - John Fordham
Enjoy this utterly evocative, original and sophisticated album.
Between The Lines
Tuesday Wonderland
Day Is Done
Motherland
Smile
Echoes: The Einaudi Collection
In My Element
Three
A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina)
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