Andrea Parkins

Improvising musician Andrea Parkins performs accordion, sampler, and piano, and non-e of her tools are contacted conventionally. As an accordionist, Parkins fragments the instrument’s traditional vocabulary and expands its features with consumer electronics and extended methods, and she combines piano and accordion with digital sampling. Through the 1990s Parkins led a trio with saxophonist Briggan Krauss and drummer Kenny Wollesen that released two CDs within the Knitting Manufacturing plant Records label, Solid Iron Truth in 1996 and Slippage in 1998. In to the fresh millennium she’s continued to create significant contributions towards the absolutely unique audio of tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin’s operating trio, which include the wiry and nimble Jim Dark on drums. The formidable musicianship of Eskelin and Dark cannot be reduced as factors with this trio’s excellence, however the group may appear at least a little more standard if Parkins’ accordion and sampler had been replaced, in regular jazz trio style, by way of a bassist. Parkins could be noticed on such Eskelin CDs as you Great Day time…, Kulak, 29 & 30, Five Additional Items (+2), Ramifications, and THE TRICK Museum on Hatology in addition to Jazz Trash within the Songlines label. She also shows up on Many Bands, the Knitting Manufacturing plant Records launch by improvising guitarist Joe Morris and his quartet (also including Karen Borca on bassoon and Rob Dark brown on alto saxophone and flute). Within the 2000s, Parkins started executing in another innovative improvising trio, a collaborative undertaking that also features guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Tom Rainey — she could be noticed on 2004’s Ash and Tabula released by Atavistic and on Downpour, released with the Victo label in 2007 and documented live on the preceding year’s Celebration International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec.