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, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2025, he will be a Fulbright Senior Scholar at National Taiwan University.
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; a constellation of suspended instruments that plays a composition made from brain waves, a sanctuary for birds and humans 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 and Associate Professor at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.
Contact
steven.c.parker(at)gmail.com
Recent / current projects
Fanfare, Public Art Installation, Idaho, March 2024
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
“Steve is recalibrating our most profound relationships. There is something wholly ordinary about the sounds he documents, even—or especially—those separating life from death. If the bird will not stop to sing, so be it. Steve invites us to sit and wait for the next one to come along. ”
“The generosity and respect with which Parker forms his connections — sonic, sculptural, conceptual — always includes his audience, and always invites them to create their own.”
“Incredible, jaw-dropping soloist”
“Steve Parker exemplifies the way contemporary artists push beyond the boundaries of genres and media towards the pursuit of creativity. His generous approach brings together groups of trained performers and even invites curious members of the public to participate in his scores.”
“There was only one possible criticism of the trombonist Steven Parker’s wonderful performance of Sequenza V: a sorry lack of clown shoes.”
“Music in a traditional auditorium is well and good, but if we’ve learned one thing from Steve Parker, it’s that all the world’s a concert hall. His boldness and fervor inspire us and carloads of other music lovers to go off-roading with him at every opportunity. Honk if you love Steve Parker!”
“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.”