Find all Global Conference 2025 Panels: https://milkeninstitute.org/ev....ents/global-conferen

Jensen Huang
Founder and CEO, Nvidia
Jensen Huang founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has served since its inception as president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board of directors. Since its founding, NVIDIA has pioneered accelerated computing. The company’s invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined computer graphics, and ignited the era of modern AI. NVIDIA is now driving the platform shift of accelerated computing and generative AI, transforming the world's largest industries and profoundly impacting society. Huang has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering and is a recipient of the Semiconductor Industry Association’s highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award; the IEEE Founder’s Medal; the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award; and honorary doctorate degrees from Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, National Taiwan University, and Oregon State University. He has been named the world’s best CEO by Fortune, the Economist, and Brand Finance, as well as one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people. Prior to founding NVIDIA, Huang worked at LSI Logic and Advanced Micro Devices. He holds a BSEE degree from Oregon State University and an MSEE degree from Stanford University.

Michael Milken
Chairman, Milken Institute

Lars Gotrich | May 7, 2025
Music can transport you, even or especially when the destination's unknown. For 22 minutes, this is what Jeff Parker's Tiny Desk with the ETA IVtet can offer: a space for your mind to meditate on what the music speaks, set to a gossamer groove.

Even though Parker is in the group's name, equality runs the show: a quiet drone sets the tone, then the music is completely improvised. Stillness, followed by reflection and response. Josh Johnson, an alto saxophonist with a quiet-yet-commanding sense of effects, builds little worlds out of loops and fluttering melody. Jay Bellerose, a drummer who's worked with the likes of Allen Toussaint and Suzanne Vega, is painterly in his brush and stick work, but bursts with a sun-beamed drum fill when the moment calls. Anna Butterss performed next to Jenny Lewis for her Tiny Desk in early 2020; here, the bassist both provides a grounding presence and the basis for liftoff. Parker — an immediately recognizable, yet malleable guitarist known for his time in Tortoise, the Chicago Underground and a CV far too long to list here — plays with repetition until melodic figures reveal themselves. Informed by the members' backgrounds in jazz, ambient, funk, rock, electronic and minimalist music, the band's mystical approach to improvisation never bends to one sound at a time.

Andie Huether, our audio technical director for this concert, dug into NPR's equipment archives and set out a Nagra IV tape recorder on the Desk as a nod to engineer Bryce Gonzales, who developed a live mixing and recording rig with a similar unit for the band's sets at the now-closed ETA club in Los Angeles. "In the days before portable digital recorders," Huether explains, "NPR reporters and engineers would take machines like this one into the field to capture reporting and bring (or ship) the resultant tapes back to HQ to be edited and incorporated into our broadcasts." We didn't record this Tiny Desk analog, but the spirit remains: a conversation captured in small space, one worth watching — and hearing — over and over again.

SET LIST
"Hearing 3.26.25"

MUSICIANS
Jeff Parker: guitar
Josh Johnson: alto saxophone
Anna Butterss: bass
Jay Bellerose: drums

TINY DESK TEAM
Producer: Lars Gotrich
Director/Editor: Maia Stern
Audio Technical Director: Andie Huether
Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame
Audio Engineer: Josh Newell
Production Assistants: Ashley Pointer, Dora Levite
Photographer: Grace Raver
Tiny Desk Copy Editor: Hazel Cills
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

#jeffparker #nprmusic #tinydesk

Support for NPR Music comes from Capital One. Presenting sponsor of the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest. What's in your wallet? Learn more at CapitalOne.com.