ZEENA PARKINS

Zeena Parkins is an electro-acoustic composer/performer, improviser, and pioneer of contemporary harp performance, re-imagining both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Awards include Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Artist Award, Berliner Kunstlerprogramm/DAAD Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund grants NYFA Fellowship, and Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence. Parkins received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Bard College in 2022 and has been the Darius Milhaud Professor of Composition at Mills College.

Parkins sustains a long-time devotion to working with movement located within both the worlds of dance and sound/music and is dedicated to process, collaboration and a quotidian obsession with in-between-ness: undefined spaces and forgotten histories lurking mainly but not exclusively within musical topographies. Here lies a rich and vibrant resource for topics, problems to solve, and relationships to untangle for her compositions, performances, instruments and multi-speaker installations. 

Tactility/Gesture/Time/Texture/Translation: Each of these, especially the “T’s”, can be combined and recombined to achieve a subtly of meaning and function in the work of Parkins.