Zeena Parkins & Ikue Mori

(US)
improvisation, experimental jazz

Harp is an ancient instrument and lap top the latest. Extremes meet on a visually titillating urban trip!

Harp is now a rare instrument, but if you play it like Zeena Parkins, you get to the cutting edge in any style. Playing it acoustically and electrified, with all manner of effects, she appears on over 70

albums and has collaborated with Björk, Yoko Ono, Elliott Sharp, Don Byron, Butch Morris, Thurston Moore and Jim O’Rourke, among others. She leads the Gangster Band using strings, percussions and

electronics, and, as an on-going project, keeps re-interpreting Debussy’s La Mer. She has composed for films, videos, theatre and dance productions.

Ikue Mori is one of Parkins’ long-time collaborators. They were soloists in Fred Frith’s work Traffic Continues. Mori moved from Tokio to New York in 1977 and was soon the drummer in the

no-wave band DNA with Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. In the 80’s she took drum machines to improvised music. In the new millennium she has concentrated on making music on lap top in synchronisation with

visuals. She has composed profusely for films and, on top of Phantom Orchard, belongs to Mephista and John Zorn’s Electric Masada.