In their debut collaboration, New York-based artists Zeena Parkins and Cecilia Lopez have released the new album Red Shifts, featuring two instruments they invented. Parkins plays the electric harp she designed, as well as acoustic harp and ebow piano. Lopez performs on her RED—a large-scale, handwoven electronic instrument made from speaker wire—in addition to electronics and synthesizers.
Parkins is an electro-acoustic composer and improviser who describes herself as a “pioneer of contemporary harp practices.” She explores new possibilities through expanded techniques, object preparations, and electronic processing, as well as her self-designed series of electric instruments. She characterizes her compositional style as “explorations of subtle frequency shifts, feedback, over and under tones, melodic fragments, timbral and gestural intervals, perception, and residues.”
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Lopez is a composer, musician, and multimedia artist who works across the media of performance, sound, installation, and the creation of sound devices and systems.
The eight-track album Red Shifts is now available in CD and digital formats from Relative Pitch Records via Bandcamp. Learn more about Parkins on her website.
