Fulbright Scholar in 2025
In 2025, I will be Fulbright Scholar at the National Taiwan University Graduate School of Musicology. Over six months, I’ll be building new instrument sculptures from found materials in night markets that will be used to facilitate improvised performances with community members and experimental musicians from throughout Taiwan.
More info here.
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
I’m very honored to receive a Pollock-Krasner Grant. This funding will support two new sculptural projects: FIGHT SONG and the GOLEM.
Read more here.
Bat News
BAT // Man, a 2016 participatory work I wrote for for 1.5 million bats, choir, and musicians, has been the subject of several scholarly articles in Sounds, Ecologies, Musics, Sound Studies, and Musicultures.
The scholar Julianne Graper at Indiana University also has a forthcoming book about the intersection of sound, music, and Texas animal species.
American Composers Forum McKnight Residency
I’m grateful to the American Composers Forum for the opportunity to be a McKnight Composer in Residence in Minnesota, where I’ll be working on new marching band projects.
Announcement here.
Article in UTSA Today
Glasstire’s Best of 2023
Thanks, Glasstire & Barbara Purcell, for the shoutout in the Best of 2023 list for Sonic Meditation for Solo Performer at Co-lab projects.
Article here.
NYT Review: Listen to Five of the World’s Newest, Wildest Instruments
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
Steve Parker’s musical instruments make no sound. Instead, this trombonist repurposes brass instruments as sculptural listening devices. His inspirations are the early-20th-century military sound locaters — some called war tubas — that were used to detect approaching enemy aircraft before the invention of radar. Parker’s instruments exude a similar gangly menace, with yards of Seussian tubing ending in the flared bells of trombones and sousaphones.
Read more here.
New solo exhibitions & reviews
Futurist Listening curated by Melanie Lenz in London
Day is Done curated by Dennis Nance at the Galveston Arts Center (Glasstire’s Top Five)
Sound Garden at KMFA 89.5
Design Milk’s 2020 Year in Review
Rome Prize
I won the Rome Prize to create an opera that features a series of new sonic sculptures and wearable devices.
Here are some articles about it: Glasstire | Sightlines | Oberlin | UTSA
Futurist Listening reviews
Design Milk and This is Colassal reviewed my solo exhibition in NYC, curated by Marcela Guerrero.
Solo exhibition in NYC
CUE Art Foundation is pleased to present Futurist Listening, Steve Parker’s first solo exhibition in New York City, curated by Marcela Guerrero. This series of work takes the form of sonic headwear, acoustic sculptures built from brass instruments, and graphic scores, all of which build upon World War II audio tactics such as jamming signals, coded messages, and warning sirens, reimagining them in sculptural form as vehicles for present-day protest and deception.
January 9 – February 12, 2020, 137 West 25th Street, Ground Floor
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 9, 6-8PM
Improvisational Brass Performance with Steve Parker, David Byrd-Marrow, and Sam Kulik: Friday, January 10, 7-8:30PM
press release | catalogue | catalogue essay: “Steve Parker: Call and Respond” by Lilia Ricio Taboada
MAAA GRANT
I’m happy to share that I’ve been awarded a Mid America Arts Alliance Artistic Innovations grant to support a new exhibition in partnership with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Walton Arts Center, and the Amazeum. Listening Objects uses sculpture, performance, and education to engage the public in the art of listening. At the heart of this project is the creation of interactive sound sculptures that facilitate the simple, yet overlooked, act of focused listening. These objects will be experienced by people of all ages and will be exhibited outdoors during Artosphere: Arkansas’ annual Art + Nature festival. These sculptures will be accompanied by an illustrated book of listening games, a series of public workshops, and live performances.
WAR TUBA RECITAL
Happy to share some press & beautiful documentation of WAR TUBA RECITAL, courtesy of Jose Lozano, Colin Doyle, and Sarah Frankie Linder.
Press: Arts + Culture Texas (Cover Story) | Glasstire | Austin Chronicle | Art Profiler | Sightlines
WAR TUBA RECITAL examines the history of conflict through sound. Combing military artifacts (acoustic locators, air raid sirens, leaflet propaganda of Dr. Seuss, coded radio transmissions, the WWII Ghost Army, and the weaponization of marching bands) with the sonic philosophies of John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and Cornelius Cardew, items are transformed into tools for awareness, discovery, and renewal.
TITO'S PRIZE
I'm incredibly grateful and honored to receive the 2018 Tito's Visual Art Prize, which is facilitated by the wonderful Big Medium Gallery. The prize comes courtesy of a donation from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, the Austin–based liquor company and includes a $15,000 award and a solo exhibition in the Big Medium Gallery, which will open with a special reception on Friday, October 19 and run through the East Austin Studio Tour.
Press: Official announcement | Austin Chronicle| Glasstire | Sightlines | Austin 360
SIGHTLINES PROFILE
What is Steve Parker actually doing?
Luke Quinton
The Austin-based musician has composed music for an ensemble of vehicles and created sound art sculpture that riff on WWII war tubas. Now he's composing for grackles
FUSEBOX FESTIVAL INTERVIEW
Steve Parker on his Grackle-Inspired Sound Walk Around Austin
Steve Parker is a trombonist, composer, and curator based in Austin, Texas. After training in classical trombone, his practice shifted towards socially-engaged projects that bring together interdisciplinary collaborators to experiment with sound and new ways of being together.
Steve’s latest project GRACKLE CALL, premiering at Fusebox this April, is no different: audience members are invited on a sound walk throughout the city where they’ll encounter dance, poetry, and installations all related to the city’s iconic bird.
KUT MORNING EDITION
Pest Or Pal? Artists Explore Austin's Long, Strange Relationship With Grackles
Mose Buchele
Austin is a place that not only prides itself on bars and festivals, but also on its wildlife. While bats and salamanders have long enjoyed a certain ecological cache, lately the great tailed grackle has become a controversial contender for unofficial city mascot. Still, it flies in a strange borderland between love and hate.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Review: Ensemble Signal’s Musicians Do Solo Turns in ‘Theatricals’
David Allen
There was only one possible criticism of the trombonist Steven Parker’s wonderful performance of Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza V” (1966) on Tuesday evening, part of a Pop-Up concert at Miller Theater: a sorry lack of clown shoes.
THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE
A Bicycle Built for Tunes
Robert Faires
Bicycles aren't just for personal transportation anymore. You can also use them to make music. Well, there's one of them you can use to make music: Steve Parker's Lo Fi Cycle, just installed on the Long Center lawn as part of Art in Public Places' TEMPO program of temporary art installations.
PBS ARTS IN CONTEXT
Music for Wilderness Lake
Set against the stunning backdrop of Laguna Gloria, R. Murray Schafer’s Music for Wilderness Lake is a contemplative experience that combines a natural soundscape with haunting music. Organized by Director Steve Parker, twelve trombonists position themselves around the lagoon to play the experimental piece at dawn and at dusk, while a conductor sits in a canoe in the middle of the lagoon.