biography
Tim Parkinson (b.1973) is an independent composer, based in London, UK since 1997. He studied at Worcester College, Oxford, studied privately with Kevin Volans in Dublin, and in 2001 he participated in the Ostrava New Music Days, attending seminars with Jean-Yves Bosseur, Petr Kotik, Alvin Lucier, Zsolt Nagy and Christian Wolff.
Music has been written for various groups and ensembles including Apartment House, Reservoir, London Sinfonietta, [rout], Chroma; and for various instrumentalists including Stephen Altoft, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, Julia Eckhardt, Anton Lukoszevieze, Tanja Masanti, Andrew Sparling, Craig Shepard, Philip Thomas, Stefan Thut. Music has been performed in UK, Europe, USA, Armenia, New Zealand, Japan.
Broadcasts of music have been on Resonance FM (www.resonancefm.com), Wandelweiser Radio (www.timescraper.de), BBC Radio 3 (www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/hearandnow), and WDR Köln.
A recording of "cello piece" played by Stefan Thut is available on Edition Wandelweiser Records. (www.timescraper.de)
A recording of "clarinet and words" is shortly to appear on Andrew Sparling's forthcoming solo CD on Lontano Records Ltd.
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.
Independently he has curated, presented and performed many concerts, forming working relationships with musicians without intention of forming an ensemble. 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.
In 2005 launched the yearly London based concert series, “Music We’d Like to Hear” (www.musicwedliketohear.com) with composers John Lely and Markus Trunk. A fourth series is planned for summer 2008.
Selected Bibliography
"Zetmaschinen" by David Ryan - Dissonanz, August 2003
"Tim Parkinson" by Bryn Harrison - Counterpoints, May 1999
Selected Comments
"As we listened in the foyer, surrounded by Sinfonietta soloists before the somewhat disappointing final concert, to the melodious, somewhat sixties sounds of Tim Parkinson's "untitled (winter 2002)", I reflected on how the state of composition in this country might have turned out if this ensemble had been prepared to take such risks thirty years ago. Perhaps much less of the more mainstream predictable stuff which the Sinfonietta feels obliged to offer on these occasions might have been written." Keith Potter, The Independent, 2nd May 2002
"It has the feeling of a very genial assemblage (...) -- light in character, but not at all superficial. This is not a characteristic I hear in much other music from the UK." Michael Pisaro, California Institute for the Arts.
Tim Parkinson Cello Piece EDITION WANDELWEISER RECORDS CD "Very few composers have made use of the shuffle play function offered by CD players. Tim Parkinson is one who has, and he’s used it creatively. His austere and ostensibly minimal Cello Piece (2004), written for the cellist Stefan Thut, consists of twelve sections which can be played in any order. This isn’t, by any means, a new compositional strategy (Pierre Boulez and Earle Brown, for example, have written compositions that may be tackled in this way), but Parkinson has constructed each of his twelve pages of music so cunningly that there are a number of perspectival shifts within each of the sections, new ideas are introduced when you least expect them, and there are no clear beginnings or endings anywhere in the score. None of the musical events offer any indication as to what has gone before or what will happen next. Even after several listens in standard play it’s hard to predict when changes are about to occur, and once the numerous permutations offered by shuffle play have been factored in, the piece assumes a complexity that such minimal materials would seem to deny.
Except, on reflection, the material isn’t minimal at all. As with Morton Feldman’s works from the 1980s, Parkinson seems to use repetition intuitively rather than according to a fixed compositional logic, and the range of string articulations and sonorities that Thut has to produce is extensive. Perhaps what’s more important is that Parkinson has avoided making a music which draws attention to either its or the performer’s virtuosity. In its unostentatious, non-Romantic presentation and compositional integrity it reminds me somewhat of Bach’s “Cello Suites”, a total music." Brian Marley, The Wire, March 2007
