Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Jazz Festival New York Posts 2025 Lineup
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
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
The Blue Note Jazz Festival New York kicks off May 27 with a James Moody 100th Birthday Celebration at Sony Hall.
Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
“I’m certainly influenced by Geri Allen,” said Iverson, during a live Blindfold Test at the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival.
Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
“At the end of the day, once you’ve run out of differences, we’re left with similarities,” Collier says. “Cultural differences are mitigated through 12 notes.”
Apr 15, 2025 11:55 AM
DownBeat has a long association with the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference, the premiere…
“It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”
Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Davis was a two-time Grammy winner for liner notes.
Apr 22, 2025 11:50 AM
Francis Davis, an august jazz and cultural critic who won both awards and esteem in print, film and radio, died April…
