Aaron Parks and Bryony Jarman-Pinto @EFG London Jazz Festival

Pianist Aaron Parks, who released his latest Blue Note Records album “By All Means” at the beginning of November, played a short set on Thursday afternoon at the Jazz Social, the pop up venue which offers live performances, interviews, live radio, a record shop, and more during this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival. The record features Ben Solomon on tenor sax, Ben Street on bass, and the legendary Billy Hart on drums. And even though Aaron likes to play solo, he hasn’t performed this latest material in a solo setting yet. He included “Parks Lope” (what a great wordplay) into his short mix as well as the standard “Darn That Dream”. Over the years, his playing has become exceptionally imaginative and iridescent and it is always a joy to hear him play. There are a lot of little textures and layers in his compositions which makes it all the more exciting and actually, that’s one of the reasons why I keep coming back to his recordings. There is always something new to explore with each new listen. Aaron, who lives in Lisbon now, was interviewed after his set during which he strenghtened the fact how important it is to play with elders like Billy Hart. He also continues his work with his group Little Big. Check out their latest LP “Little Big III” which came out on Blue Note last year.

Later that day, I went to Kennington in the South East of London. There is this lovely jazz club Toulouse Lautrec which seats a few people in the upstairs room. British singer Bryony Jarman-Pinto was performing two sets and sang songs from her two albums “Cage And Aviary” (2019) and “Below Dawn” (2024), the latter of which received a four-paw review on these pages last year. I still dig the songs from that album and she came up with slightly grooving, majestically gliding versions of tracks like “O”, the jazzy “Deep”, or the wonderful “Water Come”. She has this crystal-clear voice with a beautiful shape and color which is truly unique. A very soft vibrato shines through here and there which only adds to the beauty of her voice. And the spellbinding overall enchanting sounds on “Riverside” were a special treat. She deserves much wider attention. Bryony records for the independent UK label Tru Thoughts and we’re looking forward to much more exciting music from this very special artist.