Life and career
Born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan, Parkins studied at Bard College and moved to New York City in 1984. [3] Her work ranges from solo performance to large ensembles. [2] Besides standard and electric harps, her work also incorporates Foley, field recordings, analog synthesizers, samplers, oscillators and homemade instruments.
She has recorded six solo harp records [2] and recorded and performed with Björk, [4] Matmos, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Tom Cora, Christian Marclay, Yoko Ono, [5] John Zorn (including in Cobra performances), [3] Chris Cutler, Pauline Oliveros, [6] Nels Cline, [7] Elliott Sharp, [8] Lee Ranaldo, [9] Butch Morris, [10] Tin Hat Trio, [11] William Winant, [12] Anthony Braxton, Bobby Previte, [13] Courtney Love's band Hole, [14] and others. She has also been a member of a number of experimental rock bands, including No Safety, [15] News from Babel, [16] and Skeleton Crew. [3]
Parkins worked with dance companies and choreographers, including the John Jasperse Company, Jennifer Monson, [17] Neil Greenberg, and Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh, and has won three Bessie Awards for her achievement in composition for dance. [2]
She provided scores for filmmakers including Abigail Child, [18] Isabella Rossellini, [19] and Cynthia Madansky. [20] [2]
Parkins received a 1997 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. [21]
Miya Masaoka is an American composer, musician, and sound artist active in the field of contemporary classical music and experimental music. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, electroacoustic music, inter-disciplinary sound art, sound installation, traditional Japanese instruments, and performance art. She is based in New York City.
Ikue Mori, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, electronic musician, composer, and graphic designer. Mori was awarded a "Genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2022.
Jim Black is an American jazz drummer who has performed with Tim Berne and Dave Douglas. He attended Berklee College of Music.
William Hooker is an American drummer and composer.
DJ Olive is an American disc jockey and turntablist. He is known for producing music generally in the electronic genre, with strong influences of dub, and free improvisation styles. He is widely credited with coining of the term "Illbient" in 1994. He was a founding member of the immersionist group Lalalandia Entertainment Research Corporation in 1991.
Thomas Henry Corra, better known as Tom Cora, was an American cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock. He recorded with John Zorn, Butch Morris, and the Ex, and was a member of Curlew, Third Person and Skeleton Crew.
Kato Hideki is a Japanese musician and composer. He was a seminal member of the Tokyo Noise music scene of the late 80s and early 90s, collaborating with Japanese experimental musicians such as Otomo Yoshihide, Tatsuya Yoshida, Makigami Koichi, and Yamatsuka Eye. He led his own bands, Player Piano and Bass Army. He was a member of the original Ground Zero with Otomo and Uemura Masahiro. In 1992 Kato moved to New York City where he still resides.
Chris Brown is an American composer, pianist and electronic musician, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improviser and pianist with groups as "Room" and the "Glenn Spearman Double Trio." In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble "The Hub". He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation "Talking Drum", the "Inventions" series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance "Transmissions" series, with composer Guillermo Galindo.
Roger Kleier is an American composer, guitarist, improviser, and producer.
Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings. This is a selection from bands he was/is a member of, collaborations with other bands and musicians, and his solo recordings. The year indicates when the album was first released. For a comprehensive discography, see the Discography of Fred Frith by Michel Ramond, Patrice Roussel and Stephane Vuilleumier.
Death Ambient is an American experimental and ambient music trio comprising Kato Hideki, Ikue Mori, and Fred Frith (guitar). The group was formed by Kato and Mori in 1995 and recorded three albums: Death Ambient (1995) Synaesthesia (1999), Drunken Forest (2007) with guest Jim Pugliese (percussion).
Freedom in Fragments is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It was composed by Frith in 1993 as "a suite of 23 pieces for saxophone quartet", and was performed by the Rova Saxophone Quartet between February 1999 and January 2000 in San Francisco. The album was released on Tzadik Records' Composer Series in 2002. Frith does not perform on this album.
Stone, Brick, Glass, Wood, Wire is a double live album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It comprises a series of graphic scores Frith composed in 1992 "for any number of players". It was performed live by Frith, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins and the International Occasional Ensemble at five concerts in Canada, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. Frith also conducted and directed the performances.
Ches Smith is an American musician, whose primary instruments are drums, percussion, and vibraphone.
Sylvie Courvoisier is a composer, pianist, improviser and bandleader. She was born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, and has been a resident of New York City since 1998. She won Germany’s International Jazz Piano Prize in 2022 and was named Pianist of the Year for 2023 in the international critics poll of Spanish jazz publication El Intruso. NPR’s Kevin Whitehead has encapsulated the distinctive character of Courvoisier’s art this way: “Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral. Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground.”
Maybe Monday is an American experimental electroacoustic improvisation music ensemble comprising guitarist Fred Frith, koto player Miya Masaoka and saxophonist Larry Ochs. The trio was formed in San Francisco in March 1997 when they performed in a concert at the Great American Music Hall. They have since toured the United States, Canada and Europe, and released three albums between 1999 and 2008.
Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith. The band comprises Frith on guitar, Zeena Parkins on keyboards and accordion, Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Matthias Bossi on drums, and The Norman Conquest on sound manipulation. All About Jazz described their music as "somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock".
The Letter is a studio album by Fred Frith's United States experimental rock group Cosa Brava. It was recorded in France in June 2010 and Oakland, California in August 2011, and was released by Intakt Records in Switzerland on March 21, 2012.
All Is Always Now – Live at The Stone is a 2019 three-CD box set of live improvised music performed by English guitarist Fred Frith with other musicians, including Theresa Wong, Ikue Mori, Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Anderson. It was recorded between 2007 and 2016 at The Stone in New York City, and was released in March 2019 by Intakt Records in Switzerland.
Unsquare is a 2008 studio album by Maybe Monday, a San Francisco based experimental electroacoustic improvisation music ensemble featuring guitarist Fred Frith, koto player Miya Masaoka and saxophonist Larry Ochs. It is their third album and includes guest musicians Gerry Hemingway, Carla Kihlstedt, Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins. Unsquare was recorded at East Side Sound Studio in New York City on November 18, 2006, and was released by Intakt Records in Switzerland in January 2008.
