Aaron Parks

• Aaron Parks

Acclaimed pianist and composer Aaron Parks returns to Blue Note Records—where he released his influential label debut Invisible Cinema in 2008—with the 2024 release of Little Big III, the third studio album from his band Little Big featuring guitarist Greg Tuohey, bassist David Ginyard Jr., and drummer Jongkuk Kim.

Parks made his first Blue Note appearances as a member of Terence Blanchard’s band, an outfit akin to The Jazz Messengers in its cultivation of future jazz greats. After appearing on the trumpeter’s albums Bounce, Flow, and A Tale of God’s Will throughout the early 2000s, Parks made his own Blue Note debut in 2008 with Invisible Cinema, a striking album that has only grown in its influence across the modern jazz landscape since its release. The music travelled across new sonic and rhythmic frontiers with Parks’ evocative original compositions imbued with a cinematic drama that drew inspiration from the likes of Wayne Shorter, Radiohead, Bjork, Meshell Ndegeocello, and more. The album featured the pianist with Mike Moreno on guitar, Matt Penman on bass, and Eric Harland on drums, a band whose unique sound would eventually evolve into Parks’ ongoing project Little Big.

Parks has since released two studio albums with Little Big, as well as two albums on ECM including a solo piano recording a trio album with Billy Hart and Ben Street. Parks has performed and recorded with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Terri Lyne Carrington, Ambrose Akinmusire, Kendrick Scott, Gretchen Parlato, Dhafer Youssef, and Marcus Miller among others. He is also a founding member of the collective James Farm with Joshua Redman, Penman, and Harland, and appeared on Redman’s 2023 Blue Note debut where are we. In 2022, he released a pair of collaborative trio albums with Harland and Matt Brewer.