Jeff Parker

Jeff Parker (b. Bridgeport, Connecticut USA, 4/4/67) is a guitarist, composer, educator, and sculptor of sonic textures. Since 1990, he has focused on being adaptable in musical environments that are constantly changing; he is an improvising musician. He is also a composer of instrumental songs. Recognized as one of contemporary music’s most versatile, innovative electric guitarists, his music is characterized by ideas of angularity and logic, as well as an instantly recognizable tone on the instrument. He works in a variety of mediums, using ideas informed by innovations and trends in both popular and experimental music. 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 his 35 years of playing the guitar.

He is a founding member of the critically acclaimed and innovative groups Isotope 217˚ and Chicago Underground, and a longtime member of the band Tortoise. He has released several collaborative albums under his own name. “Jeff Parker is arguably the most exciting and thoughtful jazz guitarist of the past two decades, a masterful free improviser who’s also fluent in everything from postbop to postrock.” – Chicago Reader