Arborescence

Description

Aaron Parks titled his first album for ECM "Arborescence" because it is the result of a studio session of piano improvisations where little was prepared in advance. The pieces featured developed on the spot, like "living beings," in the artist's words. "I felt as if the music was taking shape under my fingers and going where it needed to, in a branching way." In this music, one can hear echoes of Arvo Pärt, Paul Bley, Erik Satie, or even Kenny Wheeler; but this album is above all deeply intimate and singular. If you listen carefully, you can hear Parks humming the melodies in unison with the piano, as if he were playing alone, for himself, in his living room. It is music of great contemplative poetry "that I often played without a determined intention," he admits, "as if in a state of waking dream or semi-conscious reminiscence."