Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Pianist Aaron Parks’ Little Big ensemble is set to issue its second full-length, Little Big II: Dreams Of A Mechanical Man, on May 8.
(Photo: Eleonora Birardi)After two years of touring with his quartet Little Big—and a year of collaboration with artists such as drummer Terri Lyne Carrington—pianist and composer Aaron Parks returns with the release of his group’s sophomore recording, Little Big II: Dreams Of A Mechanical Man (Ropeadope). Parks, guitarist Greg Tuohey, bassist David “DJ” Ginyard and drummer Tommy Crane have found a group voice that seamlessly integrates influences from popular music, the jazz tradition, classical composition and folkloric songs.
“Here”—a track off Little Big II, which is due out May 8—debuts below.
“To me, there’s something about this song that feels deeply melancholic but also tentatively hopeful,” Parks said. “[It has] a slowly shifting perspective, looking backward and forward, yet ultimately accepting the present. It’s close to a through-composed piece in some ways, where the moments of improvisation are all serving the whole. I particularly love Greg’s brief and poetic guitar solo here, as well as DJ’s brilliantly subtle bass counterpoint and Tommy’s small stuttering variations to the central groove. On the production side of things, Chris Taylor and I came up with some ideas that added to the specific sound of this track; in particular, there’s an almost subliminal part that he played on a synth called the Octave Kitten that sounds like some kind of distant astral wind and helps to give the song a specific sense of place.”
Little Big II: Dreams Of A Mechanical Man communicates with a clarity and simplicity that belies its ultimate depth. The music continues the band’s cultivation of a musical language that marries creative improvised music to more groove-centered material—electronica, indie-rock, hip-hop and psychedelia—but without a trace of mannered fusion or any sense that the music is cobbled together from disparate styles. DB
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
Butcher Brown, clockwise from top left: Marcus Tenney, DJ Harrison, Morgan Burrs, Corey Fonville and Andrew Randazzo. (Keyboardist Harrison couldn’t make the gig, so special guest Jacob Mann sat in with the band at the Reno Jazz Festival.)
Aug 19, 2025 12:41 PM
The band known as Butcher Brown has enjoyed the last half-decade basking in the glow from the twin engines of critical…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
