LAB8: Tim Parkinson, Roger Clarke

Ongoing Investigations. Living within and contributing to the culturemass.

Tim Parkinson (b.1973) has consistently pursued an independent path, seeking to engage with whatever it means today to be a functioning composer in the world. His music has been labelled as experimental, “reconstructing music from the ground up”, and “sounding like nothing else”, the work invariably returning to fundamental questions around the meaning of sound. He has been associated with other British independent voices of the same generation, such as Bailie, Crane, Harrison, Newland, Saunders, Whitty.  His music is mostly performed by a dedicated community of friends and musicians (amongst others Philip Thomas and Anton Lukoszevieze), but he has also written for various groups and ensembles including Apartment House, [rout], Incidental Music, Dedalus, Edges, Basel Sinfonietta, London Sinfonietta; and for various instrumentalists including Stephen Altoft, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, Julia Eckhardt, Tanja Masanti, Andrew Sparling, Craig Shepard, Silvia Tarozzi, Stefan Thut, Deborah Walker. His music has been performed in UK, Europe, USA, Armenia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Broadcasts of music have been on Resonance FM, Wandelweiser Radio, BBC Radio 3, WDR Köln, and Schweizer Radio SRF2.  Time With People, an opera, (2012-13) has received complete and partial performances in London, Cardiff, Huddersfield, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco.

He is also active as pianist and performer, both independently and also by invitation, having been an occasional performer with Apartment House, and Plus-Minus, and having performed in the UK in venues such as Tate Modern, Barbican, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and further afield in Europe, and South America. As a soloist he has performed with Object Collection, Skögen, Apartment House, Set Ensemble, Incidental Music, Q-02,  J.G. Thirlwell, Phill Niblock, Matteo Fargion, Lee Patterson, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies,  Jürg Frey, Michael Pisaro, Michael Parsons, Gavin Bryars,  Joshua Rifkin, Tom Johnson, and Christian Wolff, amongst others. Since 2003 has been regularly performing with composer James Saunders in the lo-fi electronics, auxiliary instrument and any-sound-producing-means duo Parkinson Saunders.

He has organised many public concerts to promote the presence, wealth and variety of present day music exploration, one thread of which is the concert series, Music We’d Like to Hear (www.musicwedliketohear.com), co-curated with John Lely and Markus Trunk annually in London since 2005.

In 2011 he was visiting Professor of Composition at Brno Academy, and he has also lectured at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Oxford Brookes, Ostrava New Music Days, Huddersfield University, as well as teaching at Ashmole Academy and Christchurch Primary School.

He studied at Worcester College, Oxford, followed by study with Kevin Volans in Dublin, and participated in the Ostrava New Music Days 2001, attending seminars with Petr Kotik, Alvin Lucier, Zsolt Nagy and Christian Wolff.

For more information, see Tim’s website.