Ran up to the city to catch the 8:00 set by Aaron Parks on Monday, 20 Oct, 2008. Aaron's a gifted musician who's music I recently discovered. He's very contemporary jazz (not smooth jazz) focused and is currently touring in support of his new CD, Invisible Cinema. Joining Aaron was his regular guitarist, Mike Moreno, and new supporting rhythm section of Thomas Morgan on bass and the young Marcus Gilmore on drums.
Aaron's past is quite an interesting tale. A Seattle native, he entered U of W when he was 14, was a National Merit Scholar at 15 and at 16 packed it up with his family and they all moved to NYC where he studied at The Manhattan School of Music with Kenny Barron. Surely a difficult, but wise choice!
I was really looking forward to hearing this music live and the quartet delivered the goods! The title, Invisible Cinema, is very telling. I often feel like I should be seeing a film while listening to a soundtrack, or I'll start playing scenes in my mind as if I'm FFC directing a scene..trying to find the right setting and story for the music. Very emotive!
Opening with Peaceful Warrior, the set was gentle, relaxing and engaging until the speed bump of a standard. When you have such wonderful music, does it make sense to disrupt the flow with something out of character? Perhaps. Perhaps not. For me, I would have preferred the flow, but was very satisfied with the set in general. It was a warm and rewarding evening.
There's a nice article on SFGATE.com that's a good read. It was written just before this gig.
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