In this far-ranging interview, Aaron Parks talks being a “little smarty pants” who went to college at 14, dropping four albums as a piano wunderkind teen, getting tutored by Kenny Barron at the Manhattan School of Music, mentored on the road by Terence Blanchard, being signed by Blue Note Records, and releasing modern classic Invisible Cities (2008) – all by the age of 25 …

He also inspirationally shares about his early sense of imposter syndrome, subsequent mental health crisis, and being the “chaos agent" of his own career “self sabotage".And the subsequent rebirth of recording the wonderful trio record Find the Way (2017) with Ben Street and Billy Hart, for Manfred Escher’s ECM Records, before forming the longtime working fusion band Little Big which ultimately saw him return to Blue Note – 15 years after he was dropped.

Fun fact: that all happened because he cold-call sent head honcho Don Was a recording of the two-day session that became the spellbinding new album By All Means– despite the fact a third Little Big record, also recorded in 2023, got the major-label treatment first. Parks has just two LPs left on his contract – and tells us he is hoping/planning to bag an acoustic trio live record at the Village Vanguard, as well as a fourth LIttle Big record. 

A genuine, warm and inspiring encounter with a genuine, warm and inspiring human – caught mid-tour in Europe, days after surviving Super Typhoon Ragasa in Hong Kong.