Ne(x)tworks joins forces with JACK Quartet to create composer, multi-instrumentalist, and electric harp pioneer Zeena Parkins’s new electro-acoustic compostion Spellbeamed. Commissioned by Ne(x)tworks, Spellbeamed takes inspiration from literary critic Walter Benjamin’s Archive, a published trove of images, texts, and ephemera collected by the author. For Parkins’s new composition, quotidian materials collected by each musician are utilized to form an animated score developed in collaboration with visual artist Cynthia Madansky. The resultant sound is further enhanced with live-processing by Preshish Moments and the composer, creating an ecology of inter-relationships developed between improvisers and readers, sound and score, objects and instruments.
Performances
World Premiere at The Kitchen, December 16 & 17, 2011
Roulette Brooklyn, September 10 & 11, 2012
–> New York Times review of Sept. 10 performance
Spellbeamed is produced with generous support from The MAP Fund and CBD Music, Inc.
Spellbeamed is commissioned through Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, which is made possible by generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund.
