Jeff Parker - International Anthem @ Public Records (Volume 5) '2023

Tracks list

“I’m always looking for ways to be surprised,” says composer
and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker as he explains the process, and the
thinking, behind his new album, Suite for Max Brown, released via a new
partnership between the Chicago–based label International Anthem and
Nonesuch Records. “If I sit down at the piano or with my guitar, with
staff paper and a pencil, I’m eventually going to fall into writing
patterns, into things I already know. So, when I make music, that’s what
I’m trying to get away from—the things that I know.”

Parker himself is known to many fans as the longtime guitarist for the
Chicago–based quintet Tortoise, one of the most critically revered,
sonically adventurous groups to emerge from the American indie scene of the
early nineties. The band’s often hypnotic, largely instrumental sound
eludes easy definition, drawing freely from rock, jazz, electronic, and
avant-garde music, and it has garnered a large following over the course of
nearly thirty years. Aside from recording and touring with Tortoise, Parker has
worked as a side man with many jazz greats, including Nonesuch labelmate Joshua
Redman on his 2005 Momentum album; as a studio collaborator with other
composer-musicians, including Brian Blade, Meshell Ndegeocello, and fellow
International Anthem artists Makaya McCraven and Rob Mazurek; and as a solo
artist. Suite for Max Brown is informally a companion piece to The New Breed,
Parker’s 2016 album on International Anthem, which London’s
Observer honored as ‘the Best Jazz Album of the Year,’ the New York
Times and the Los Angeles Times included on their ‘Best Albums of
2016’ lists; and recently, Aquarium Drunkard included it on their
‘Best Albums of the Decade’ 2010-2019 compendium. Observer said
“no other musician in the modern era has moved so seamlessly between rock
and jazz like Jeff Parker. As guitarist for Chicago post-rock icons Tortoise,
he’s taken the group in new and challenging directions that have kept
them at the forefront of pop creativity for the last twenty years. As of late,
however, Parker has established himself as one of the most formidable solo
talents in modern jazz.” 

Tracklist:
1.01 - Jeff Parker - Four Folks (9:36)
1.02 - Jeff Parker - Mainz (15:26)

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