Jeff Parker

Jeff Parker is a guitarist and composer known for his genre-defying work as a solo artist, with his group The New Breed, and as part of the legendary band Tortoise. His music in the last decade has ranged from the jazz-informed psychedelic beat music song cycle Suite For Max Brown to the delicate improvisational solo guitar of Forfolks. He has made music with everyone from jaimie branch to Tom Zé to Flea.

ETA IVtet is an improvising ensemble led by Parker. The band—featuring drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson—grew out of a weekly residency started by Parker in 2016 at the now defunct Highland Park Los Angeles venue ETA. By the time the venue closed its doors in 2023 the IVtet had evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music. 

The band’s audience simultaneously grew from a low key weekly hang mostly populated by friends and regulars, to a high-buzz event with a line of fresh faces stretching down the block each Monday. Part laboratory, part low-stakes proving ground, ETA is where the musical language of the IVtet percolated and coalesced into an instantly recognizable, egalitarian group sound. The sum of four distinct and equal voices, that sound was initially captured on two critically-acclaimed records recorded live in the club’s humble corner—2022’s Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and 2024’s The Way Out of Easy.

The boost in notoriety wasn’t due to that residency alone though. It certainly helped that the renown and résumé of every musician in the ensemble has expanded exponentially since the start of the run at ETA. Anna Butterss’ growing recognition as a solo artist and composer is especially notable, releasing the brilliant album Activities (Colorfield Records, 2022) and a relentlessly hip followup Mighty Vertebrate (International Anthem, 2024) while also co-leading the trace-jazz rhythm machine quintet SML and continuing to be a first-call bassist with the likes of Jason Isbell, Phoebe Bridgers, Makaya McCraven, Nate Smith, and Madison Cunningham. 

Josh Johnson released two solo albums as well—Freedom Exercise in 2020, Unusual Object in 2024—while also playing in SML, with Nate Smith, in Openness Trio with Carlos Niño and Nate Mercereau, and in the acclaimed chamber-jazz unit with Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes. His work as a producer, meanwhile, has paired him with the likes of Meshell Ndegeocello (on the Grammy winning 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book), and most recently with Flea on his solo debut Honora (which also includes Parker and Butterss).

Jay Bellerose and Jeff Parker were already well-established veterans when the ETA IVtet was born in 2016—the former for a huge sideman CV including work with Allen Toussaint, Robert Plant, and Joe Henry; the latter for his work with Tortoise, Chicago Underground, Isotope 217, and myriad recording dates under his own name. Previous notoriety aside, Parker’s reputation seemed to hit the gas in tandem with the ETA years, releasing a run of critically acclaimed albums: The New Breed (2016), Slight Freedom (2016), Suite for Max Brown (2020), and Forfolks (2021) before leading the ETA IVtet on Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (2022), and The Way Out Of Easy (2024). 

Happy Today, released in 2026 by International Anthem and Nonesuch Records, is the IVtet’s latest album. Its sound finds the group’s signature syntax, built around long-form minimalist improvisation, expanding confidently into larger space while creating the same hypnotizing and deeply-tuned listening effect on visibly enraptured audiences. The album contains two sidelong pieces recorded as the band performed in the round at Lodge Room, surrounded by an audience of 400 or so deep listeners. (The venue, appropriately enough, sits on the same street and just a few hundred feet away from the storefront that used to be ETA.) 

Just Announced!

Happy Today

Now Available

The Way Out of Easy

Now Available

Forfolks

Now Available

Suite for Max Brown