Seattle-born, Thelonious Monk Competition winning pianist Aaron Parks (Kit Downes wrote about him for us back in 2009, when LondonJazz was just a few months old) has just changed some of the rules about how to get music out there.

Here’s what he’s written on his website:

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Last December, I played some trio gigs in Japan with Thomas Morgan and RJ Miller. Over the course of the tour we found a way of making music together that felt really good to me. On the last night, we played a show in Mito City and I recorded it on my phone. The quality of the audio certainly isn’t the most hi-fi, but there’s something about the vibe of Voice Memos that I’ve always liked, and after doing a bit of mastering work to boost the low frequencies, I think it doesn’t sound too shabby.

Anyway, here it is. You can have it. Just enter your email address (LINK TO BANDCAMP) and you’ll be sent a download link. If for some reason you feel compelled to contribute something, consider donating to a charity in Japan (or elsewhere in the world), or buying someone else’s record with the money you didn’t spend on this one. There’s no high concept here; this recording is basically a bootleg, a documentation of something that happened which I felt like sharing (imperfections and all). Hope you enjoy.