Aaron Parks Trio - 'Find the Way' (ECM, 2016)

I've sort of had this record in my library for a few weeks, but ignored it after an initial listen.  I picked up on Parks probably when a lot of other people did--with his Blue Note debut a decade or more ago.  That record struck me--moreso than the records of Parks' amazing generation of peers--as striving to sound new and cool.  I listened to it a bunch and then forgot about it, mostly.

Then, 'Aborescense' came out and what a revelation that was--it's one of the most dynamic, deep, and emotionally moving solo jazz piano records of the millennium, with Craig Taborn's 'Avenging Angel,' also an ECM release, as its only real peer.

My sense--and this is pure conjecture--is that Blue Note let go many of the "younger" musicians it had signed in the 90s and early 00s as part of its recent transition from the last major jazz label standing to a mostly drippy jazz/smooth/pop-crap label--either it cut artists loose or pressured them to make lame records.  (Of course they kept some wonderful artists aboard, and signed a couple new ones--e.g. Ambrose Akinmusire and Charles Lloyd.

Lloyd made more sense to me as an ECM artists, but maybe it was a fair trade of Lloyd (who is making less focused and less satisfying records since his move--'The Athens Concernt' is a transcendent masterpiece) for Parks.  

'Find the Way' is a gorgeous record, but a very quiet one, which is, I think, why I ignored it.  It strikes me as a very classic "ECM" record, hailing back to many of the subtle ECM masterworks of the 70s and 80s.  Parks seems to have let go whatever pressure he was under when recording 'Invisible Cinema': this new record isn't cool; it's classical, like, if I recall, Parks early recordings as a teenage prodigy.  But he's grown up, and he's playing with extraordinary partners.

Billy Hart is a drummer I admire, but who I can never quite get excited about--he doesn't exactly strike me as having a "voice" of his own.  Before hearing him on this record, I'd thought of him as someone who plays the drums so well he isn't usually noticed (which is not a kind of virtuosity I enjoy--I'd prefer a drummer whose mistakes surface his personality).  But here, in ECM's typically crystalline sonic environment, Hart suddenly strikes me as a deeply beautiful player, whose tom and cymbal work is deeply distinctive and esoteric.

I never know how to hear Ben Street.  I've seen him perform, and my sense is he's beloved by his peers.  He always strikes me as invisible, but maybe that's the point.

And Parks is on on this disc, full of melancholy and joy, in constant and fruitful communication it seems to me--and remember, I'm a drummer, so I always hear music, especially jazz, in terms of drums-- with Hart.  Parks creates silences for Hart to fill with subtle runs across his cymbals and toms; Hart is constantly offering rhythmic ideas that Parks follows up in his runs.

This is a lovely record.  It won't shake the earth, but if you can spare some time to concentrate on it, you'll feel its depths and crenelations. 

* Update: listening to it again this afternoon, I suddenly thought, Oh, this reminds me of early and mid-career Brad Mehldau, though without Mehldau's sudden splashes and flurries of notes.  But I wonder if that is why Parks isn't regarded as one of the central figures of his generation (despite being a much-beloved one)--because Mehldau beat him there, and then went further.

Craig Teicher