The Squid's Ear Magazine


Parkins, Zeena (Parkins / Parkins / Parkins / Cochrane / Mori / Shea): Ursa's Door (Les Disques Victo)

"On her debut album for Victo, the former Michigander and downtown New York music stalwart enlisted the skills of three of her four sisters, producer David Shea, electronic percussion maestro Ikue Mori, and guitar hero Chris Cochrane. T...
 

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Personnel:



Zeena Parkins-harp [electric], keyboards, percussion, tape, piano

Margaret Parkins-violoncello, voice

Chris Cochrane-electric guitar

Ikue Mori-electronic drums, drums

Sara Parkins-violin, voice

David Shea-voice, percussion


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Label: Les Disques Victo
Catalog ID: VICCD018
Squidco Product Code: 1084

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 1992
Country: Canada
Recorded at Baby Monster Studios, New York, in June 1991 and January 1992.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"On her debut album for Victo, the former Michigander and downtown New York music stalwart enlisted the skills of three of her four sisters, producer David Shea, electronic percussion maestro Ikue Mori, and guitar hero Chris Cochrane. Truly an avant-garde chamber work, "Ursa's Door" employs strings, electric harp, voices, found sound, piano, and electric guitar to realize the complex methodologies of group improvisation in a tightly structured context. While there is no "melodic" framework per se in Parkins' work, the various harmonic intervals suggest one or two. And while there are no "movements" proper, this is a symphonette, full of dynamic shifts, contrapuntal assignations, and the dramatic mechanics suggested by the appearance of a "conductor" in David Shea. It's fun, this work; its dissonances and atonal slashes and burns are more than soothed by the warmth, humor, and technical virtuosity of the players. A second and much shorter work, "Flush," explores a microtonaluniverse governed by mode and polyrhythmic changes in harmonic and physical characteristics. This is music as physical and psychical universe, related phrase by phrase through an ever-shifting continuum of silences and dynamic restraint. It's as if the work has no body, but creates one through the interplay and layering of strings. Only Mori's percussion suggests an alien presence in the work. Zeena Parkins has been recognized as a composer of merit and substance for her Tzadik and Avant recordings; this one should be included in her canon as a pair of works worthy of note."-Thom Jurek, All music


Artist Biographies

"Multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser, Zeena Parkins, pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance, reimagines the instrument as a "sound machine of limitless capacity." Parkins has built three versions of her one-of-a-kind electric harp and has extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of electronic processing.

Inspired and connected to visual arts, dance, film, and history, Zeena follows a unique path in creating her compositional works. Through blending and morphing of both real and imagined instruments, crafting, recombining, and layering mangled, sliced, massaged or possibly disengaged sounds, drawing from extra-musical sources for unusual scoring and formal constructions as well as utilizing multi-speaker environments, Zeena remains in process with sound as material and music, engaged in translations of sonic states in the concert hall, the black box theater, the dance studio, the recording studio, the classroom, the cinema, the skyscraper, the ocean and the gallery. Zeena has a particularly strong commitment to making scores for dance and continues to re-evaluate the nature and issues of the body's imprint on sound and sound/music's imprint on movement.

Parkins's compositions have been commissioned by NeXtWorks Ensemble, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Roulette Intermedium, The Eclipse Quartet, William Winant, Bang on a Can, The Whitney Museum, The Tate Modern, Montalvo Arts Center, The Donaueschinger Musiktage and Sudwestrundfunk/SWR.

Parkins has released four solo records featuring her electric and acoustic harp playing and has released her compositions and band projects on six Tzadik recordings, with a new Tzadik CD with Ikue Mori and Phantom Orchard Orchestra, Trouble in Paradise, to be released in November 2012. As a sought-after collaborator Zeena has worked with: Fred Frith, Björk, Ikue Mori, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Maja Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Chris Cutler, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, William Winant, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Matmos, Yasunao Tone, So Percussion, Bobby Previte, Carla Kilhstedt, Tin Hat, James Fei, Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore.

Awards: The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship, NYFA Music Fellowship, Meet the Composer Commission, NYSCA Composer Commission, Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant, American Music Center, BAFTA award for best interactive media with visual artist Mandy McIntosh and sound artist Kaffe Matthews, Peter S. Reed Fellowship, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Commissions, Arts International, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention for Phantom Orchard in the Digital Music category.

Curatorial: Guest curator for The Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria, co-curator of the Movement Research Festival: Sidewinder, in NYC and curator for a month + a week of shows at The Stone in NYC

Residencies: Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Oxford University, Harvestworks, Steim, Paf: Performing Arts Forum, Wooda Arts Residency, Montalvo Arts Center, RPI/iEAR and The Watermill Center.

Teaching: Zeena has given lectures at Oxford and Princeton Universities and has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Bard and Mills College. Currently, Zeena is a Distinguished Visiting Professor, at Mills College Graduate Music Department."

-Zeena Parkins Website (http://www.zeenaparkins.com/about.html)
11/5/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Chris Cochrane is a songwriter and guitarist who has been playing in New York since the 1980s.

Chris has played with Thurston Moore, Zeena Parkins, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Billy Martin, Eszter Balint, Mike Patton, Henry Kaiser, Andrea Centazzo, Annie Gosfield, Tim Hodgkinson, Miguel Frasconi, Richard Buckner, Davey Williams, Ladonna Smith and Jim Pugliese. He has composed music for Dennis Cooper, John Jasperse, Neil Greenberg, Nayland Blake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jennifer Monson and Circus Amok. He was in the bands No Safety and Curlew, and is currently in Collapsible Shoulder with Brian Chase, Kato Hideki and Kevin Bud Jones and Bee Line with Billy Martin and Kato Hideki. He will be touring this summer with Marc Ribot's Young Philadelphians."

-Chris Cochrane Website (http://thechriscochrane.com/bio/)
11/5/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Ikue Mori moved from her native city of Tokyo to New York in 1977. She started playing drums and soon formed the seminal NO WAVE band DNA, with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. DNA enjoyed legendary cult status, while creating a new brand of radical rhythms and dissonant sounds; forever altering the face of rock music.

In the mid 80's Ikue started in employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. While limited to the standard technology provided by the drum machine, she has never the less forged her own highly sensitive signature style. Through out in 90's She has subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. 1998, She was invited to perform with Ensemble Modern as the soloist along with Zeena Parkins, and composer Fred Frith, also "One hundred Aspects of the Moon" commissioned by Roulette/Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronics Digital Music category in 99.

In 2000 Ikue started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound, thus broadening her scope of musical expression. 2000 commissioned by the KITCHEN ensemble, wrote and premired the piece "Aphorism" also awarded Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship. 2003 commissioned by RELACHE Ensemble to write a piece for film In the Street and premired in Philadelphia. Started working with visual played by the music since 2004. In 2005 Awarded Alphert/Ucross Residency.

Ikue received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2006. In 2007 the Tate Modern commissioned Ikue to create a live sound track for screenings of Maya Deren's silent films. In 2008 Ikue celebrated her 30th year in NY and performed at the Japan Society. Recent commissioners include the Montalvo Arts Center and SWR German radio program and Shajah Art foundation in UAE. Current working groups include MEPHISTA with Sylvie Courvoisier and Susie Ibarra, PHANTOM ORCHARD with Zeena Parkins, project with Koichi Makigami and various ensembles of John Zorn. New duo Twindrums project with YoshimiO  workshop/lecture in various schools include University of Gothenburg, Dartmouth Collage, New England Conservatory, Mills Collage, Stanford University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago"

-Ikue Mori Website (http://www.ikuemori.com/bio.html)
11/5/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"David Shea Born December 8, 1965, Springfield, Massachusetts, currently living in Melbourne, Australia.

David Shea is a composer working with combinations of samplers and live musicians, centered on the possibilities of electronic and acoustic traditions. The focus is on the interconnections between styles, histories and mediums with single pieces containing multiple layering's of compositional methods, electronic and acoustic orchestrations - Drawing from experimental music and film music influences as well as traditional musics from both eastern and western cultures, many pieces are based on films, novels, mythology and visual sources."

-Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/47578-David-Shea)
11/5/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Ursa's Door 31:45

2. Flush 14:51

Related Categories of Interest:

May 2017
Victo
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Parkins, Zeena
Mori, Ikue
Sextet Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Les Disques Victo.


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