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  Zeena Parkins / Cecilia Lopez 
  Redshifts
  (Relative Pitch) 


  
   review by Ken Waxman
  2026-04-01
Zeena Parkins / Cecilia Lopez: Redshifts (Relative Pitch)

Melding a collection of electro-acoustic textures, American Zeena Parkins playing electric and acoustic harp plus e-bow piano, and Argentinean Cecilia Lopez on synthesizers and custom-built RED speaker-wire instrument, create a variegated program where the sounds are often as unidentifiable as they are original.

While only the duo was on stage during this live performance, the timbres heard go far beyond what's expected from the instruments involved. At various junctures tones that could come from a dedicated drum set, a piano keyboards, a steel guitar, a double bass and even various woodwind breaths are added to the general gestalt. Otherwise the contours of the eight tracks are characterized by harsh and sometimes seemingly impenetrable electronic drones.

Parkins, who has worked with avatars such as John Zorn and Evelyn Glennie and Lopez who has played with those with differing visions such as Aki Onda and Brandon Lopez, connect on a syncretic level however. Alternating acoustic and electronic timbres as on "Peculiar Velocities" this balance is reflected with such interludes as singular methodical string plinks meeting up with whumping voltage stops, then overlaid with wheezy reed-like whistles and squeezes.

Thick bass-like string reverberations brush up against strident reed-like chirps and aviary twitters on "Blue Shift", as the exposition definition becomes a transformative melody as much dependent on harp string glissandi as the skittering oscillations and shaking buzzes from electrified wave forms.

Intuitive cooperation is expressed at its most dedicated and diverse on "Expansion y Corrimiento al Rojo" [Expansion and Redshift] the nearly 17-minute Spanish translated title tune. This prototype begins as an unbroken wave form signal is broken up with e-bow grinds that splinter the nearly opaque mass so that tremolo reed-like trills and fluctuating throbs move forward. After a synthesizer-created organ-like pulsation intensify the tension adding a pressurize lathe-like whirr, the re-thickened mass is diluted and gradually fades away as signal processed additions share space with pure acoustic string scrubs.

Creating common ground by stretching their imaginations and the boundaries of their instruments to their extremities, Parkins and Lopez have created an unbeatable example of sophisticated electro-acoustic fusion — even if some of the tones remain unexplained.







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