Richard Reed Parry
As the red-headed polymath and multi-instrumentalist at the heart of the endlessly inventive art-rock band Arcade Fire, RICHARD REED PARRY has performed in front of immense crowds and sold millions of records across the world. But this is only one aspect of an artist whose unconventional trajectory has resulted in work that is as varied as it is surprising and unique.
In between the last few Arcade Fire world tours Parry has crafted an innovative debut record of solo compositions, released in summer 2014. Realized slowly and thoughtfully over a handful of years, Music for Heart and Breath is an exquisite collection of modern neo-classical pieces in which each note is played in synch with the heart rates or breathing rates of the performers, each musician generating their own tempo by listening to their pulse with a stethoscope during the performance. Produced with his great friend and collaborator Bryce Dessner of The National, the album features performances by Dessner, Kronos Quartet, Nico Muhly and yMusic Ensemble. At times fragile, playful, sombre and intimate, these unique and stunning creations have been dreamt into life by Parry's refreshing compositional approach and his own philosophical belief that music and nature - in this case the human body - can be, indeed are, explicitly linked.
Adding to the breadth of that picture, Parry has premiered a piece for Bang On a Can at the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York, created a surround-sound, sci-fi electronic composition for synths, voices and, yes, bicycles called "Drones/Revelations," and collaborated on The National's last two critically acclaimed albums, the Grammy-nominated Trouble Will Find Me and High Violet. He recorded and produced Montreal artist Little Scream's magnificent debut album The Golden Record and is currently putting the finishing touches on her upcoming sophomore release. In 2014, the Brooklyn Academy of Music debuted a series of compositions he wrote for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus as part of Black Mountain Songs, an event curated by Parry and Bryce Dessner which also included pieces by Nico Muhly, Tim Hecker, Dessner and Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw.
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