The Squid's Ear Magazine

Parkins, Zeena

To Dusk (Black Cross Solo Sessions 8)

Parkins, Zeena: To Dusk (Black Cross Solo Sessions 8) (Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Sidelined by the pandemic in June of 2020, Downtown New York electric harp improviser Zeena Parkins began daily recordings in her home studio exploring new approaches to solo electric harp performance using pedals, objects & percussions, selecting ten of the most interesting improvisations for her contribution to Corbett vs. Dempsey's Black Cross Solo Sessions.
 

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Zeena Parkins-electric harp, pedals, objects, and percussion


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Label: Corbett vs. Dempsey
Catalog ID: CvsDCD090
Squidco Product Code: 32708

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2022
Country: USA
Recorded at home in Manhattan, June, 2020-June, 2021. Mixed by John Thayer in Greenpoint, September, 2021. Mastererd by Alex Inglizian at ESS in Chicago, October, 2021.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Every day over the course of a year starting in June, 2020, in something she refers to as a "domestic ritual," Zeena Parkins recorded solo electric harp performances in her home studio. The brilliant improvisor and composer had, like most of her peers, been sidelined by the pandemic; unable to tour, she spent the end of each day at the harp, playing until sunlight waned, inventing and discovering new soundscapes, keeping her musical self together while the world seemed poised to crumble. Parkins' audience consisted of her boyfriend, filmmaker Jeff Preis (who filmed and recorded all the music) and their dog.

Invited to participate in the Black Cross Solo Sessions, she returned to this deep well of recordings and selected ten tracks, augmenting the harp with pedals and resonant and resonating objects including bells and other percussion. To Dusk is a uniquely vibrating set of auditory investigations, a buzzing, ringing, hammering, plunging suite of instant compositions snatched from the maw of a malicious moment in the world's collective history. Liner notes by Zeena Parkins. Cover artwork and design by Christopher Wool."-Corbett vs. Dempsey


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)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Concave-convexed 1 7:25

2. Concave-convexed 2 6:07

3. Concave-convexed 3 5:09

4. Concave-convexed 4 5:25

5. Concave-convexed 5 3:50

6. Kura Skymning 1 4:59

7. Kura Skymning 2 5:24

8. Kura Skymning 3 5:43

9. Kura Skymning 4 7:53

10. Clinging hard to the earth with my toes 8:11

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Stringed Instruments
Percussion & Drums
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Parkins, Zeena
Solo Artist Recordings
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New in Improvised Music
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Corbett vs. Dempsey.


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