When the American, Oakland-based Mills College closed down in 2022, the New York-based experimental harpist and composer Zeena Parkins, who taught composition at the college for thirteen years, asked her colleagues to “mark this loss, and honor the school’s great legacy” by commissioning works for her, dedicated to students, colleagues, and a collective devotion to experimental art making. Lament for the Maker, titled after a poem by American, San Francisco-based poet Jack Spicer, collects four compositions that employ Parkins’ innovative acoustic harp practices and extended techniques, including object preparations and electronic processing, that redefined the instrument’s sonic palette.
American sound artist Laetitia Sonami’s “She is a Butcher in my Dreams” (2024) was developed with Parkins and uses her tactile techniques, including splits, slices, rubs,
