Meet Brian Park

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brian Park. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brian, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I get my resilience from many years of practicing alone. Growing up without any musicians in my family or friends, I didn’t have many people around me to share and play music together which made me enjoy music alone in my room with my guitar for some years.

I believe that there are two different types of growth as a musician. One is from playing with and for others and another is from playing alone. The biggest difference between those two are that one comes from sharing, joy and compassion whereas when I’m alone, the growth are often from pain and endurance.

I suppose this happens to be the case since in our practice, we must be honest with ourselves and face the part of. ourselves that we are not content with. Practicing one’s craft is a way to reflect on oneself and through practice we are able to learn how to accept ourselves. It is a bizarre thing since art and music is subjective yet one can tremendously deepen his relationship with his instrument through practice.

A few years ago, I had a rather strange experience. I had been invited to play with one of my best friend outstate. We were playing a couple of jazz standards and I was very happy with how I sounded on stage but when I cameback and sat down to work on my instrument, I was not able to focus and I felt this pain and insecurity arising within me. I couldn’t figure out why since I was getting overwhelmingly positive feedback. I had to stop playing and sit in my room to meditate what was going on. I realized that my mind was constantly getting pulled to a particular trauma I didn’t even know I was hurt from. I sat down and mourned for some time and talked myself through it until I it went away. After a while, I was able to find peace with my own memory. I realized every part of life is connected to one’s craft. Sometimes we grow through simply being alone with your thoughts.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am running a band which is currently named the “Brian A. Park Trio” or the “Brian A, Park Quartet”. I had 10 shows in 2023 and we’re currently working on a record with originals for the first record. It is mostly improvised instrumental music. The format of the music is mostly jazz influenced where we play the form of the song and create a ‘re-telling’ of the story when the whole form repeats. I’m a huge fan of jazz but I always loved the tone of ambient musicians such as Brian Eno, My Bloody Valentine, Mid-Air Thief and Sigur Ros.

Lately I’ve been working on writing short and easy yet hip songs that I can play with my friends. In my opinion, jazz improvisation is a re=telling of the story of the song. Each chorus of improvisation should(or could be) a rendition of the emotional quality of the song told by your own words. However I often found this to be limiting through time to time. If we were to improvise over a song such as “Giant Steps” or “Donna Lee”, there would be required stylistic vocabulary and skill to a degree in order to freely play them. I want to write songs that are welcoming for musicians on all levels and supporting for them to be able to simply “be themselves” when they play them. Hopefully more people in LA will stumble upon my songs.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Watch your Dynamics. If you want to play with others, having a good sense of Dynamics will be very important. It has to come from intuition and being present. If you couldn’t hear the bass line and the vocals of Billie Jean because the drums are too loud, it’ll ruin the magic. Yet, something adjacent to that happens so many times on a band stand. If you listen to others and play at appropriate volume, people will appreciate you respecting their space.

Kindness is a virtue. It seems to me that people care more about your personality than your skills. Be kind.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
The people that I jam with in nature helped me grow. I started jamming with my friends back in Boston at Charles River and it has been one of my favorite part of my life ever since. The jam grew and more people started to show up with more gear after a year, we were having dozens of people with a full band setup in nature. I continued to carry this jam in LA and my friends and I started hosting jams at Venice beach. We are planning to have a cave jam in February.

I could not believe that all these people showed up in nature just to play music. I’ve always dreamed of being able to play music care-free with my friends in nature. I thank all my friends who came out to spend time together.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Max Greenbaum Joy Park Mikaela Vera Cruz

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