Jeff Parker with Tashi Dorji

The influential guitarist of Tortoise, Isotope 217, and Chicago Underground makes his SPACE debut alongside avant-guitar journeyman and one-time Mainer, Tashi Dorji!

SPACE currently requires that all attendees wear masks during indoor events. Please refer to our health and safety policy for more information.

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.

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, George Lewis, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Peter Erskine, Carmen Lundy, Makaya McCraven, Vijay Iyer, Yo La Tengo, Daniel Lanois, Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Jason Moran, Joey DeFrancesco, Nels Cline, Charles Earland, Ken Vandermark, Dave Douglas, Fred Anderson, Tom Zé, Clipping, and hundreds more.

Tashi Dorji grew up in Bhutan, on the eastern side of the Himalayas. Access to any music created outside the country is limited, as are most cultural options, given the geologically isolation of the country. Yearning for access to the world outside, Dorji pursued and obtained scholarship to a liberal arts school in Asheville, NC, in his early twenties. He’s since settled in there, after a stint living in Maine, and has soaked up a vast array of music, most notably the works of Derek Bailey and John Zorn. Dorji has developed a playing style unbound by tradition, lavish in intuitive artistry. His recordings feature improvisations that spasmodically grow along awe-inspiring paths. All references break loose during a composition, as Dorji keys into his own inner world.