JEFF PARKER & BRAD BARR
JEFF PARKER & BRAD BARR
Saturday, April 19
Jeff Parker (solo) + Brad Barr (solo)
At the Iron Horse in Northampton
co-presented with Thump Capsule
POSTPONED
AN EVENING WITH TWO GUITAR ICONOCLASTS
Two of our favorite guitarists trade sets in our favorite room in Northampton. Both Jeff Parker (Tortoise) and Brad Barr (The Slip, Barr Bros) have played the Horse in years past; but never solo, and never on the same bill. Brad and Jeff have different styles, but they’re both interstitial artists — they share a musical restlessness that’s taken them each across a broad spectrum of genres, interests, methods, techniques. And improvisation and experimentation are integral to both of their processes.
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 is a long-time member of the indie band Tortoise, and is also a founding member of Isotope 217 and Chicago Underground. A highly incomplete list of his collaborations includes Andrew Bird, Joshua Redman, Toumani Diabate, Yo La Tengo, Tom Zé, and Makaya McCraven.
Over a career that spans three decades, BRAD BARR has cultivated a uniquely visceral, disarmingly intimate approach to the guitar. If you’re already a fan of the Montreal-based Barr Brothers, or the legendary improv-rock trio The Slip, then you already know — it’s futile to try and categorize his ongoing experiments in sound and songwriting.
His musical journeys, almost always in lockstep with sibling drummer Andrew Barr, have taken them on chimerical paths: from all-night sets at jam festivals to the main stages of Newport Folk and Montreal Jazz; from tightly focused avant-rock collaborations to atmospheric reverb-laced folk ballads. Starting in the mid-90s, their trio The Slip built a global cult following for their wide-ranging compositions and deeply improvisational sets.
His collaborations include such artists as My Morning Jacket, Calexico, Bela Fleck, The War on Drugs, Tinariwen, Built to Spill, The Prodigy, Emmylou Harris, and others.
POSTPONED DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES. RSVPs WILL BE PROMPTLY REFUNDED.