Zeena Parkins

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Zeena Parkins, 2008

Zeena Parkins (* 1956 in Detroit , Michigan) is an American harpist (also keyboard , accordion and live electronics) who works in the area between avant-garde jazz , art rock , free improvisation and noise music .

Live and act

Parkins studied dance, classical piano and harp and graduated from Bard College . She has been an important part of the downtown scene since she arrived in New York City in 1984 : She worked with John Zorn and Butch Morris , formed the “Skeleton Crew” with Fred Frith and Tom Cora and worked repeatedly with Ikue Mori and with Elliott Sharp , with whom she appeared around 2003 in Bonn in the play “Sex Machine” based on Werner Fritsch's “Jenseits”. As a leader she founded the band “No Safety” in the 1980s, then the “Gangster Band” (a septet with string instruments , percussion and electronics). She was a member of the experimental bands "No Safety" and " News from Babel " and worked with Jim O'Rourke , Nels Cline , Thurston Moore , Courtney Love , Matmos and Pauline Oliveros . Some of her special projects included working with Björk on the Vespertine album (as well as two tours), with the Tin Hat Trio ( Book of Silk ), with Yoko Ono ( Blueprint for a Sunrise ) or with Don Byron . She also performed with Anthony Braxton , Christian Marclay and Lorenz Raab and collaborated with video artist Janene Higgins . She works in a trio with Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer William Hooker , but also with Susie Ibarra and Jennifer Monson. Since March 2008 she has been a member of the band " Cosa Brava ."

Parkins developed a new way of handling the harp, in which she fitted it with pickups, played it with wahwah , and prepared and worked on it with nails, screwdrivers, glasses, felt and other devices in order to elicit unusual timbres and noises. She is considered to be the pioneer of the electric harp. She has also added unusual playing techniques and layers of sounds to the sound of the acoustic harp. According to Wolf Kampmann, her unaccompanied solo records (eg "Nightmare Alley", 1992, and "No Way Back", 1998) attracted a lot of jazz criticism.

Parkin's mixture of instruments, the combination of cut sounds and sounds from non-musical sources lead to impressive soundscapes in works for the Gangster Band , but also in commissioned compositions for the Ensemble Bang on a Can . She also writes music for dance ensembles.

Parkins has performed at many music festivals in Europe , America and Japan , such as the Music Merge Festival in Tokyo , the Moers Festival , the Willisau Jazz Festival , Musique Action International in France and the City of Women Festival in Slovenia . In 2014 Parkins received the $ 275,000 Doris Duke Artist Award.

Awards

In 1997 Zeena Parkins was awarded a prize from the Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts.

Discographic Notes

  • Something Out There (No Man's Land, 1987)
  • Nightmare Alley (Table of the Elements, 1993)
  • Isabelle (Disk Union, 1995)
  • Mouth = Maul = Betrayer ( Tzadik , 1996)
  • No Way Back ( Atavistic , 1998)
  • Pan-Acousticon (Atavistic, 1999)
  • Necklace (Tzadik, 2006)
  • Between the Whiles (Table of the Elements, 2010)
  • Double Dupe Down (Tzadik, 2012)
  • Three Harps, Tuning Forks & Electronics (Good Child Music, 2016)

With Björk

  • Telegram (One Little Indian, 1996)
  • Vespertine (One Little Indian, 2001)
  • Drawing Restraint 9 (One Little Indian, 2005)
  • Biophilia (One Little Indian, 2011)

With Alex Cline

With Nels Cline

With Fred Frith

With "Maybe Monday"

  • Unsquare (Intakt, 2008)

With "News from Babel"

  • Work Resumed on the Tower ( Recommended , 1984)
  • Letters Home (Recommended, 1986)

With Marc Ribot

With John Zorn

With Tin Hat Trio

With Bobby Previte

With Pauline Oliveros

  • Presença Series # 01 (Lucky Kitchen / Fundação de Serralves, 2014)

With Myra Melford

  • Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins and Miya Masaoka : MZM (Infrequent Seams, 2020)

Lexigraphic entries

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Doris Duke Artist Award 2014 in ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. JazzTimes @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / jazztimes.com