Biography
Steve Parker is an artist, musician, and organizer based in Austin, Texas. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pollock-Krasner Award, the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is currently a McKnight Visiting Composer with the American Composers Forum.
Parker makes social sculptures: large-scale performances that facilitate meaningful exchanges between the public, densely-layered sculptural objects, and the environment. His projects include an outdoor opera for 1.5 million bats, megaphone choir, and echolocation devices; monumental ear trumpets inspired by obsolete WWII surveillance tools; an outdoor bird sanctuary made of acoustic mirrors, bird feeders, and 12th-century liturgical chants; cathartic transportation symphonies for pedicabs, automobiles, and bicycles; and sonic healing meditations played by NCAA marching bands. His work often situates the viewer as a performer, engaging them in new forms of listening.
Exhibition and performance highlights include the American Academy in Rome (Italy), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Arkansas), CUE Art Foundation (New York), the Fusebox Festival (Texas), Gwangju Media Art Festival (Korea), the Lincoln Center Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic inSIGHT, the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), Rich Mix (London), and SXSW. As a solo trombonist and as an artist of NYC-based "new music dream team" Ensemble Signal, he has premiered 200+ new works.
Parker’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Colossal, and Design Milk, among others. He is Executive Director of Collide Arts, curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton, and Associate Professor at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.
Recent / current projects
Weird Winter, The Blanton Museum of Art, Dec 2023
Golem, Sculpture Month Houston, Oct 2023
Listening Trees, City of Fort Worth, TX, Sept 2023
WAR TUBA, City of Albuquerque, NM, May 2023
Sonic Meditation for Solo Performer, Co-lab Projects & Fusebox Festival, April 2023
Sonic Meditation for Suspended Marching Band, Atlassian and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, March 2023
FIGHT SONG, Art League Houston, Houston, TX, Dec 2022
Foreign Body, Ivester Contemporary, Austin, TX, Sept 2022
Human Stylus, Fusebox Festival, Austin, TX, April 2022
Sound Treatment, Sala Diaz, San Antonio, TX, Jan - March 2022
Foghorn Elegy, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX, Oct 2021 - Spring 2022