"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."

"Jeff Kolar (b. Chicago, Illinois, US) is an independent sound artist, radio producer, and curator working in Chicago, United States. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2009. His work, described as "speaker-shredding" (Half Letter Press), "wonderfully strange" (John Corbett), and "characteristically curious" (Marc Weidenbaum), activates sound in unconventional, temporary, and ephemeral ways using appropriation and remix as a critical practice. His solo and collaborative projects, installations, and public performances often investigate the mundane sonic nuances of everyday electronic devices.

He has performed and exhibited widely across the United States, and at international venues and festivals such as the New Museum (New York, US), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, US), Moogfest (Durham, North Carolina, US), The Kitchen (New York, US), CTM Festival for Adventurous Music (Berlin, Germany), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, Illinois, US), Kino Šiška (Ljubljana, Slovenia), ORF RadioKulturhaus (Vienna, Austria), Radio Revolten International Radio Art Festival (Halle, Germany), Megapolis Audio Festival (New York, USA), LAK Festival of Nordic Sound Art (København, Denmark), among others.

His work has been reviewed and discussed in international print publications and online platforms such as The New York Times, The Wire Magazine, Red Bull Music Academy and Architect Magazine, and in an array of art, design and music publications including VICE, Art Slant, designboom, and Rhizome.org.

His work has been commissioned by the Propeller Fund, a re-granting agency of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Wave Farm, a re-granting agency of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), and others. He has delivered lectures at New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto, Canada), Le Cube Centre de création numérique (Paris, France), Concordia University Topological Media Lab (Montreal, Canada), Parsons Paris School of Art & Design (Paris, France), University of California Santa Cruz, Film & Digital Media Department (Santa Cruz, California, US), Wave Farm Study Center (New York, USA), and led workshops at Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Ecole d'Enseignement Supérieur d'Art de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, France), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA).

His work has been broadcasted internationally on radio stations including ORF Kunstradio (Vienna, Austria), Radia Network, WFMU (New Jersey, USA), Deutschlandradio Kultur (Berlin, Germany), CKUT (Montreal, Canada), Ràdio Web MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), Vancouver Co-operative Radio CFRO 100.5-FM (Vancouver, Canada), Radio Eterogenia (Córdoba, Argentina), Radio Libertaire (Paris, France), Stress FM (Lisbon, Portugal), WGXC (New York, USA), among others.

His work has been released on a variety of record labels including Panospria + No Type (Canada), H.A.K. Lo-Fi Record (France), free103point9 (US), Amigos Publishing (US), and has appeared in compilations by Furthernoise.org, iFAR (England), Phantom Airwaves (US), and Sonic Circuits (US). His video work was published in the DVD journal ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art."