Aaron Parks: this jazz is like a beautiful movie

Jazz has been consistently criticized as a music genre that tends to see backwards. As on classical music, many people agree that one of its flaws it that, in most cases, jazz players work exclusively on standards -musical themes composed in the first half of the twentieth century. Fortunately, there is an outstanding exception to the rule: a brand new generation of gifted musicians that have been making new and extraordinary music such as: Wynton Marsalis, Robert Glasper, Terence Blanchard, Dave Holland and Roy Hargrove, among others. Aaron Parks plays a remarkable role within that exclusive list. Former pianist of the Terence Blanchard band, Parks releases Invisible Cinema (2008), a record that was included in many of the lists that selected the best jazz made last year. Parks, surrounded by bass, guitar and drums bets to a somewhat more contemporary sound, with shy approaches to hip-hop and downtempo, but offering, at the same time, respectful reverence to that ancient –yet fascinating- music of jazz.