Zeena Parkins
Encyclopedia
Zeena Parkins is a harp
ist active in rock music
, free improvisation
and jazz
. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harp
s; she also plays piano
and accordion
. She is currently a member of the faculty at Mills College.
Born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan
, she studied at Bard College
and moved to New York City
in 1984.
Her work ranges from solo performance to large ensembles. Besides standard and electric harps, her work also incorporates Foley, field recording
s, analog synthesizer
s, samplers
, oscillators and homemade instruments.
She has done several solo recordings and has also recorded or performed with Björk
, John Zorn
(including in Cobra
performances), Elliott Sharp
, Ikue Mori
, Butch Morris
, Tin Hat Trio
, Jim O'Rourke
, Fred Frith
, Chris Cutler
, Lee Ranaldo
, Nels Cline
, Pauline Oliveros
, Anthony Braxton
, Matmos
, Yoko Ono
, Christian Marclay
, Courtney Love
's band Hole
and others.
She has been a member of a number of experimental rock
bands, including No Safety, News from Babel
, Skeleton Crew and Fred Frith's review band, Keep the Dog
. In March 2008 she joined Frith's Cosa Brava
quintet comprising Frith, Parkins, Carla Kihlstedt
, Matthias Bossi, and The Norman Conquest.
Parkins has often worked with dance companies and choreographers, including the John Jasperse Company, Jennifer Monson, Neil Greenberg, Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh
, and Jennifer Lacey, and has won a Bessie Award
for "sustained achievement in composing scores for dance." In 1997 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Grants to Artists Award.
She has also worked with video artist Janene Higgins
and visual artists Daria Martin, Cynthia Madansky and Mandy McIntosh.
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
ist active in rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harp
Electric harp
Like electric guitars, electric harps are based on their acoustic originals. There are both solid-body and hollow body electro-acoustic models available...
s; she also plays piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
. She is currently a member of the faculty at Mills College.
Born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, she studied at Bard College
Bard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
and moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1984.
Her work ranges from solo performance to large ensembles. Besides standard and electric harps, her work also incorporates Foley, field recording
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...
s, analog synthesizer
Analog synthesizer
An analog or analogue synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog computer techniques to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s such as the Trautonium were built with a variety of vacuum-tube and electro-mechanical technologies...
s, samplers
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
, oscillators and homemade instruments.
She has done several solo recordings and has also recorded or performed with Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
, John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
(including in Cobra
Cobra (Zorn)
Cobra is an unpublished but recorded and frequently performed musical composition by John Zorn that was conceived as a system with very detailed rules but with no pre-conceived sequence of events, or game piece, for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter. Zorn completed Cobra on October 9,...
performances), Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
, Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...
, Butch Morris
Butch Morris
Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is an American jazz cornetist, composer and conductor.-Biography:Before his musical career, Morris served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War....
, Tin Hat Trio
Tin Hat Trio
Tin Hat is an acoustic chamber music group currently based in San Francisco, California. Their music combines many genres of music, including southern blues, bluegrass, neoclassical, eastern European folk music, and avant-garde.Since its formation in 1997, the original Tin Hat Trio has often...
, Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke (musician)
Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...
, Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
, Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of a number of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and Gong/Mothergong...
, Lee Ranaldo
Lee Ranaldo
Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth...
, Nels Cline
Nels Cline
Nels Cline is an American guitarist and composer, currently the lead guitarist of alternative rock band Wilco. David Carr of the New York Times describes Cline as "one of the best guitarists in any genre."-Career:...
, Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
, Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
, Matmos
Matmos
Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore signed to the Matador Records label. M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their performances, including...
, Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
, Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
, Courtney Love
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Love is an American rock musician. Love is the lead vocalist, lyricist, and rhythm guitarist for alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989, and is an actress who has moved from bit parts in Alex Cox films to significant and acclaimed roles in The People vs...
's band Hole
Hole (band)
Hole is an American alternative rock band that originally formed in Los Angeles in 1989. The band is fronted by vocalist/songwriter and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love, who co-founded Hole with former songwriter/lead guitarist Eric Erlandson...
and others.
She has been a member of a number of experimental rock
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
bands, including No Safety, News from Babel
News from Babel
News from Babel were an English avant-rock group founded in 1983 by Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins and Dagmar Krause. They made two studio albums with several guest musicians and disbanded in 1986.-History:...
, Skeleton Crew and Fred Frith's review band, Keep the Dog
Keep the Dog
Keep the Dog was a United States-based experimental rock touring band from New York City formed in 1989 by English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith...
. In March 2008 she joined Frith's Cosa Brava
Cosa Brava
Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and improvisation quintet formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith...
quintet comprising Frith, Parkins, Carla Kihlstedt
Carla Kihlstedt
Carla Kihlstedt is an American violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania currently living in Oakland, California....
, Matthias Bossi, and The Norman Conquest.
Parkins has often worked with dance companies and choreographers, including the John Jasperse Company, Jennifer Monson, Neil Greenberg, Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh
Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh
Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh is a French dancer and a contemporary dance choreographer.She studied classical dance in Tours, France before joining the Merce Cunningham School in New York...
, and Jennifer Lacey, and has won a Bessie Award
Bessie Awards
The New York Dance and Performance Awards, informally known as the Bessie Awards in honor of Bessie Schonberg, are awarded annually for innovative achievement in dance and related performances, particularly so-called "downtown" performances...
for "sustained achievement in composing scores for dance." In 1997 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Foundation for Contemporary Arts , originally known as Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City founded by artists Jasper Johns , John Cage, Elaine de Kooning and others in 1963. FCA offers financial support and recognition to contemporary...
Grants to Artists Award.
She has also worked with video artist Janene Higgins
Janene Higgins
Janene Higgins is a graphic designer and video artist based in New York City. Her work spans several genres, from video performance in the experimental music scene to videos for Saks Fifth Avenue, and the design of several hundred CD packages for such record labels as Sony, BMG, PolyGram, and a...
and visual artists Daria Martin, Cynthia Madansky and Mandy McIntosh.
Solo studio albums
- Something Out There (1987) No Man's LandNo Man's Land (record label)No Man's Land was a German record label based in Würzburg, Germany. Formed in 1984, it ceased trading in 1997. The label was run by its proprietors in combination with the music publishing and record label Review Records and the distribution company Recommended No Man's Land...
- Nightmare Alley (1993) Table of the ElementsTable of the ElementsTable of the Elements is an American record label. It concentrates on re-released and specially recorded experimental music, including many of the great avant garde musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries — John Cale, Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, for instance — as well as...
- Isabelle (1995) Disk Union
- Mouth=Maul=Betrayer (1996) Tzadik RecordsTzadik RecordsTzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
- No Way Back (1998) Atavistic
- Necklace (2006) TzadikTzadik RecordsTzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
- Between the Whiles (2010) Table of the ElementsTable of the ElementsTable of the Elements is an American record label. It concentrates on re-released and specially recorded experimental music, including many of the great avant garde musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries — John Cale, Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, for instance — as well as...
Video
- Roulette TV: Janene HigginsJanene HigginsJanene Higgins is a graphic designer and video artist based in New York City. Her work spans several genres, from video performance in the experimental music scene to videos for Saks Fifth Avenue, and the design of several hundred CD packages for such record labels as Sony, BMG, PolyGram, and a...
& Zeena Parkins. (2001) Roulette Intermedium Inc. - April in New York - Bobby PreviteBobby PreviteRobert "Bobby" Previte is a drummer, composer and bandleader. Previte earned a B.A. in Economics at the University at Buffalo, where he also studied percussion. He moved to New York City in 1979, and became active in the city's thriving jazz and experimental music scenes...
(2007) Independent
External links
- Zeena Parkins, official site.
- Zeena Parkins: Works, official site..
- Zeena Parkins discography.