Andrea Parkins is a New York City-based composer, sound/installation artist, and electro-acoustic instrumentalist, especially acclaimed for her uniquely textural and gestural approach to her electronically-processed accordion, as well as her inventive use of customized live sound processing.

Together, her laptop electronics and Fender-amplified accordion create a dynamic sonic language full of lush harmonics, noisy concretized disruption, and soaring electronic feedback.

For this concert she will play solo as well as in group settings with special guests John Edwards (bass) and Tony Marsh (Drums).

Andrea composes solo and ensemble electro-acoustic works, electronic music pieces, and scores for dance and film. She makes audio installations and creates performance installations incorporating sound, objects and digital imagery. Her work has been presented in New York City at Diapason gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Experimental Intermedia and The Kitchen: and at contemporary music, sound, and intermedia festivals/venues throughout Europe and the US, and in Asia and Latin America. Andrea appears on more than 50 recordings on labels including Atavistic, Creative Sources, Important Records, and Hatology; and she performs internationally as a solo artist and in wide-ranging formations with colleagues such as Nels Cline, Miya Masaoka, Otomo Yoshihide and David Watson, among many others.

In 2009, Important Records released Andrea's faulty (broken orbit), a through-composed work for amplified objects, accordion feedback and processed instruments that re-imagines a multi-channel installation for which she was commissioned by NYC's Diapason gallery for sound. Other projects include a ensemble collaboration with guitarist Nels Cline that has released two CDs to date (on Atavistic and Victo); and The Skein, her electro-acoustic duo with vocalist/composer Jessica Constable, with a 2009 debut recording, Cities and Eyes, on the Henceforth label.

On an ongoing basis, Andrea develops and performs her series of interactive sound//objects/image works inspired by Rube Goldberg's circuitous contraptions. In 2008, she received a New Technology grant from New York State Council on the Arts to develop her installation-in-progress, Ob-jest, the Jettisoned Object, based on a text by Julia Kristeva. Andrea’s work has also received support from Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, and Harvestworks Digital Arts Center in the US; and the Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde in Germany.

"Parkins, a master manipulator of electronically processed accordion and laptop is one of the city's most unbounded ...well, what's the word for her? Musician seems too simple, artist too vague; perhaps 'sound-ist' is best." - Time Out/NY

Andrea Parkins on Myspace

JOHN EDWARDS

John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, John Wall, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, and many others.

TONY MARSH

Tony Marsh is a regular player on the London improvising scene. According to The Guardian's Richard Williams Marsh has a: "marvelous ability to erase the boundary between time and no-time" and "an exquisite feeling for percussive texture".

Tony regularly plays with Evan Parker, John Edwards, Paul Dunmall, Nick Stevens, The London Improvisers Orchestra and many others. Tony also played with Peter Brotzmann and Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith at café OTO in 2010.

Tony Marsh website