creative_artist

Andrea Parkins | New York | USA

electric accordion, fx, samples, live electronic procesing

Andrea Parkins is a New York-based sound artist, composer and electro-multi-instrumentalist who also makes/arranges objects and images. Known especially for her dynamic timberal explorations on the electric accordion and inventive use of customized sound processing, she wields a sonic language that is both fractured and fluid – releasing awkward electronic disruptions, concretized sampling and explosive feedback into the rising flow of her electric accordion’s sonority.
Parkins performs internationally as a solo artist, and has collaborated with Nels Cline, Fred Frith, Thomas Lehn, Otomo Yoshihide, and ROVA Saxophone Quartet, among many others. She also creates sound art works, and compositions for solo and ensemble instruments. Her audio works and performances have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, and Experimental Intermedia, among other contemporary ar/t/multimedia venues, and she has collaborated in this context with sound artists Michael J. Schumacher, Stephen Vitiello, Anne Wellmer, and others. Parkins appears on more than 50 recordings on labels including Hatology, Cryptogramophone, and Atavistic: this work has been reviewed and discussed in publications such as The Wire, Signal to Noise, Accordéon, Art Journal, The New York Times, and LA Weekly.
Parkins’ recent performances with in her collaborative group featuring guitarist Nels Cline (Wilco) and drummer Tom Rainey have culminated in a new recording, DOWNPOUR (the group’s second CD), recorded live at the FIMAV festival in Victoriaville, Quebec. Upcoming releases in 2007/2008 will include I am so 20th Century with British electro-vocalist Jessica Constable (the first release on moodtongue, a new label initiated by Parkins) and a CD of Andrea’s solo music.
In May 2007, Andrea premiered her 10-channel audio installation, Faulty (per Objective) at New York City’s Diapason Gallery for Sound and Intermedia. On an ongoing basis, she continues to exhibit and perform a series of Max/MSP-based interactive sound and image works inspired by Rube Goldberg’s circuitous contraptions, developed at artist’s residencies sponsored by the Hamburg Cultural Board in Germany and at Harvestworks in NYC. She is a recipient of several Meet the Composer performance grants and a 2008 individual artist’s grant from the New York State Council for the Arts for completion of her multi-platform installation, The Specificity of Objects (or not).