Zeena Parkins

All Music Guide:

Zeena Parkins plays the harp, piano, accordion, and sampler in a variety of improvised, new music, modern composed, and avant-garde jazz settings. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she studied dance, harp, and classical piano, and earned a Fine Arts degree from Bard College. Parkins moved to N.Y.C. in 1984, where she began collaborating with other musicians in downtown's avant-garde music scene. She performed in Butch Morris' ensembles and in John Zorn's Cobra. She also formed Skeleton Crew with renowned improviser Fred Frith and versatile cellist Tom Cora, and toured Europe, Japan, the U.S., and Iceland with them. From 1986 on, Parkins composed scores for theater, dance, and films, commissioned by performers, venues, and organizations such as Meet the Composer, NY State Council for the Arts, and The Rockefeller Foundation. She's remained interested and involved in staging multimedia performances, and gave workshops for dancers and musicians at N.Y.C.'s Movement Research and in Vermont, at Bennington College. As a leader, Parkins has performed and recorded solo -- as with No Way Back, on Atavistic -- as well as with her Gangster Band. Gangster Band, which includes relatives Sara and Margaret Parkins, has recorded her compositions for the Avant and Tzadik labels, including the chamber piece for Isabelle Eberhardt, Isabelle (1995), and 1999's Pan-Acousticon, which she co-produced with longtime collaborator Elliot Sharp (she performed in his group, Carbon, too). The Gangster Band has performed at festivals in Europe, and at a variety of N.Y.C. venues, from the Lincoln Center to the Knitting Factory. Parkins has performed and recorded in a wide realm of settings, from working with Pauline Oliveros and Anthony Braxton, to an MTV Unplugged concert with the rock band Hole. She has played at new music and jazz festivals around the world, including The Moers Festival (Germany), Switzerland's Taklos Festival, Music Merge in Tokyo, and Quebec's FIMAV. After a somewhat quiet period, a live recording featuring improvisers Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Nels Cline (Geraldine Fibbers), appeared on JMZ Records.

Wikipedia:

Zeena Parkins is a harpist active in rock music, free improvisation and jazz. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harps; she also plays piano and accordion. She is currently a guest faculty member for composition courses at Mills College.

Born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan, she studied at Bard College and moved to New York City in 1984.

Her work ranges from solo performance to large ensembles. Besides standard and electric harps, her work also incorporates Foley, field recordings, analog synthesizers, samplers, oscillators and homemade instruments.

She has done several solo recordings and has also recorded or performed with Björk, John Zorn (including in Cobra performances), Elliott Sharp, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Tin Hat Trio, Jim O'Rourke, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Lee Ranaldo, Nels Cline, Pauline Oliveros, Anthony Braxton, Matmos, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Courtney Love's band Hole and others.

She has been a member of a number of experimental rock bands, including No Safety, News from Babel, Skeleton Crew and Fred Frith's review band, Keep the Dog. In March 2008 she joined Frith's Cosa Brava quintet comprising Frith, Parkins, Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi, and The Norman Conquest.

Parkins has often worked with dance companies and choreographers, including the John Jasperse Company, Jennifer Monson, Neil Greenberg, Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh, and Jennifer Lacey, and has won a Bessie Award for "sustained achievement in composing scores for dance." In 1997 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

She has also worked with video artist Janene Higgins and visual artists Daria Martin, Cynthia Madansky and Mandy McIntosh.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).