Singletary Center presents Jeff Parker & The New Breed

Jeff Parker is recognized as one of contemporary music’s most versatile and innovative electric guitarists and composers. With a prolific output characterized by musical ideas of angularity and logic, he works in a wide variety of mediums - from pop, rock and jazz to new music - using ideas informed by innovations and trends in both popular and experimental forms. He creates works that explore and exploit the contrary relationships between tradition and technology, improvisation and composition, and the familiar and the abstract.

His sonic palette may employ techniques from sample-based technologies, analog and digital synthesis, and conventional and extended techniques from over 40 years of playing the guitar. He has been a member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1995.

An integral part of what has become known as “The Modern Chicago Sound,” he is a longtime member of the influential indie band Tortoise, and is also a founding member of Isotope 217˚ and Chicago Underground. A look at his extensive work as a collaborator and session musician offers a glimpse into Mr. Parker’s diversity. This list includes Andrew Bird, Meshell Ndegeocello, Joshua Redman, Toumani Diabate, Makaya McCraven, Vijay Iyer, Yo La Tengo, Daniel Lanois, Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Jason Moran, Nels Cline, Ken Vandermark, Tom Zé, Clipping, and hundreds more. Parker’s 2016 release, “The New Breed,” was named the Top Jazz Album of the year in The London Observer, and his 2020 releasee, “Suite For Max Brown,” debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard Jazz Chart, included on numerous year-end Best Of lists, including WIRE Magazine, MAGNET Magazine, and The Guardian.

For this engagement, the lineup for The New Breed is:
Jeff Parker, guitar
Paul Bryan, bass guitar
Josh Johnson, alto saxophone
Makaya McCraven, drums