The duo of Zeena Parkins and Brian Chase brings together two visionary performers of the improvised and experimental music world. They performed their first duo concert in 2016. Performance credits include, among more, numerous concerts at The Stone (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC), National Sawdust (NYC), October Revolution festival sponsored by Ars Nova Workshop (Philadelphia) and Jazz Em Agosto (Lisbon). Their debut album, Live at San Damiano Mission, was released in 2019 and is available through Chaikin Records. 

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Zeena Parkins is an electro-acoustic composer, improviser and pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance. Parkins re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Within a shifting constellation of improvised/composed/gesture/touch/ space/sound/noise/music, Parkins is engaged in translations of sonicity often within multi-channel environments: architectural, emotional, topographical, and social.

 

Commissions include: Whitney Museum, Tate Modern, Montalvo Arts Center, Sharjah Art Foundation, NeXtWorks Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble/Ensemble Son, Donaueschinger Musiktage, SWR German radio, Bang on a Can Spit Orchestra, Eclipse Quartet, iLand, Thin Man Dance, Human Future Dance Corps and Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

 

Awards include: Doris Duke Artist Award, 3 Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance, DAAD Fellowship, Multi-Arts Production Fund, Shifting Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA Fellowship, The Jerome Foundation, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention. Residencies include: Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, Rauschenberg Fellowship Residency, Civitella Ranieri/Umbertide, Montalvo, Oxford University/The Ruskin School.

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Brooklyn-based musician Brian Chase is the drummer for Grammy-nominated rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, NYC’s experimental music community and Drums and Drones, a solo project with a compositional focus on the harmonic resonances derived from drums and percussion. As an exceptionally versatile performer, Brian’s music has taken him across the world to such notable stages as the Sydney Opera House, the Reading and Leeds Festivals, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as countless independent art spaces of music’s ‘underground’ communities. Recorded works include several with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many with leading improvisors and composers such as Zeena Parkins, Catherine Sikora and Jeremiah Cymerman. In 2018, Brian released Drums and Drones: Decade, a triple album with 144 page book (Chaikin Records), described in The Wire as “luscious laboratory experiments in listening to stretched skins, wooden vessels and metallic surfaces.” As an educator, Brian was a visiting professor at Bennington College and guest lecturer at So Percussion’s Summer Institute at Princeton University. Essays and writings have appeared in John Zorn’s Arcana series, Modern Drummer magazine, and culture blog Talkhouse. Performer and artist residencies have been held at Headlands Center for the Arts and The Stone. In 2018, Brian started his record label, Chaikin Records.