Jeff Parker Expansion Trio

In the last 30 years, Jeff Parker has cultivated one of the most distinct guitar tones in modern music—bright and warm, incisive and definitive, melodic and unpredictable. For many, of course, that sound first found attention via Tortoise, the pan-everything band Parker joined in time to record 1998’s tremendous TNT. But Parker’s work in various iterations of Chicago Underground and Isotope 217 and alongside Joshua Abrams helped establish him as an ultra-inquisitive instrumentalist, open to testing the boundaries of what so-called jazz guitarists could do. During the last decade, he has flung those doors open. After moving to Los Angeles, Parker has made a stunning series of records, from the spectral Slight Freedom to the soulful Suite for Max Brown. His Forfolks was a mesmerizing study in the accessibility of solo guitar, while his remarkable ETA IVtet often feels like a trance.

Parker brings another novel and new band, the Expansion Trio, from Los Angeles to Big Ears 2026. Like Parker, Jeremiah Chiu has roots in Chicago, though he grew up in the punk strongholds of the city’s suburbs. A modular synthesizer whiz who also live-samples his collaborators by putting a microphone in front of their gear, Chiu works as the central nervous system of the great SML. Ben Lumsdaine, meanwhile, was raised in nearby Indiana as a young jazz drummer before decamping to Los Angeles, where he has worked in the city’s fertile new jazz and folk-rock scenes, from playing with Bright Eyes to recording on Anna Butterss’ rhythmically extravagant solo albums. Parker’s career has been defined by pursuing new directions; the Expansion Trio represents yet another step in that quest.