Andrea Parkins is a New York-based sound artist, composer, and improviser who plays electronically-processed accordion, laptop sampler, electronic keyboards, and piano. Parkins sonically expands her accordion with analog electronics and by fragmenting traditional accordion syntax with noise and other disruptive allusions. In live performance, this idiosyncratic approach to the instrument collides with densely polyrhythmic keyboard tactics and laptop sampling that pays homage to mid-20th century musique-concrete and ’70s analog synth sounds. Parkins’ composition projects have included solo works; small and large ensemble pieces; and sound design for her own multi-media sculptural installations. During the past 15 years, she has performed in New York City and toured throughout North America and Europe as an ensemble leader, solo artist
, and collaborator, and as a member of Ellery Eskelin’s widely acclaimed avant-jazz trio with Jim Black. Her latest ensemble project is a collaboration with guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Tom Rainey that will release a CD on the Atavistic label in 2004. Performance plans for 2004 include concerts in Europe with this new trio as well as with Swiss electronic musician Gunter Mueller, gigs in North America with bagpiper David Watson and turntablist Toshio Kagiwara, and an interactive work at The Kitchen in New York City. In recent years, Parkins has received several performance grants from Meet the Composer and two production residency grants from Harvestworks in New York City. Parkins’ audio work, Freak Cloud Idiom, was among those featured in “Bitstreams,” a digital art exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2001. Also in 2001, Parkins was awarded a grant by the the city of Hamburg, Germany for an artist’s project/residency. Currently, Parkins is developing a series of MAX/MSP-based generative audio works, with programming by Matthew Ostrowski, that are inspired by Rube Goldberg’s circuitous contraptions.
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