Composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker’s Suite for Max Brown will be released on January 24th, 2020 via International Anthem. The album, named for and dedicated to Parker’s mother, features nine original songs as well as “Gnarciss,” an interpretation of Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus,” and John Coltrane’s “After the Rain.”
The album follow’s Parker’s critically praised 2016 record The New Breed, which, as the composer says, “became a kind of tribute to my father who he passed away while I was making the album. It’s named for a clothing store he owned when I was a kid. I thought it would be nice this time to dedicate something to my mom while she’s still here to see it. Maxine Brown is her maiden name and everybody calls her Max. The picture on the cover is her when she was nineteen.”
Parker’s bandmates on Suite for Max Brown, dubbed The New Breed, include pianist-saxophonist Josh Johnson; bassist Paul Bryan, who co-produced and mixed the album with Parker; Rob Mazurek, his frequent duo partner; trumpeter Nate Walcott, a veteran of Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes; drummers Jamire Williams, Makaya McCraven, and Jay Bellerose, Parker’s Berklee School of Music classmate; cellist Katinka Kleijn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and his daughter Ruby Parker, who sings on the opening track.
Parker says of his new album, “I used to deejay a lot when I lived in Chicago. I was spinning records one night and for about ten minutes I was able to perfectly synch up a Nobukazu Takemura record with the first movement of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and it had this free jazz, abstract jazz thing going on with a sequenced beat underneath. It sounded so good. That’s what I’m trying to do with Suite for Max Brown. It’s got a sequenced beat and there are musicians improvising on top or beneath the sequenced drum pattern. That’s what I was going for. Man vs. machine."
Tracklist
1. Build a Nest
2. C’mon Now
3. Fusion Swirl
4. After the Rain
5. Metamorphoses
6. Gnarciss
7. Lydian, Etc.
8. Del Rio
9. 3 for L
10. Go Away
11. Max Brown
