Zeena Parkins
Award winning composer/performer Zeena Parkins multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser, 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.
She regularly collaborates with artists such as Fred Frith, Björk, Ikue Mori, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Maja Ratkje, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Chris Cutler, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Matmos, Yasunao Tone, Kim Gordon and Chris Cutler.
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, 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 concert halls, theaters, dance studios, recording studios, classrooms, cinemas, and in nature.
Parkins has a strong commitment to making scores for dance and continues to re-evaluate the issues of the body’s imprint on sound and sound/music’s imprint on movement. She has received three Bessies for her extraordinary work in music within the dance and performance field in the United States and abroad for over two decades.