About Marisa Michelson and Miriam Parker
Marisa Michelson (CBA ’21) is a singer, composer, improviser, vocal philosopher and teacher. She is the founder and director of the vocal performance collective Constellation Chor | an immersion in voice, movement, and spirit. Performing internationally and in New York City, the Chor made their Lincoln Center debut in 2018 premiering Ashley Fure’s Filament with the New York Philharmonic. Since 2016, Constellation Chor has been in residence at the historic Judson Memorial Church and in 2019 the Chor performed monthly at Spectrum in Brooklyn, New York. They have collaborated with Claire Chase, Sarah Hennies, the Kitchen, Heartbeat Opera, Harvard Art Lab. Since the pandemic, they joined Maria Popova and Paola Prestini at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York to bring to life Prestini’s composition Tree of 40 Fruit as part of an outdoor ritual-celebration. As well as collaborating with composers, choreographers, directors, and videographers, they perform interdisciplinary pieces composed by Michelson. As a solo artist or as the director of Constellation Chor, Michelson has been in residence with or won awards from Pioneer Works, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell, Ucross, New Dramatists, Jonathan Larson, the Eric Salman Foundation, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. Michelson lives, works and teaches in New York City and Hudson, New York.
Miriam Parker (CBA ’21) is an interdisciplinary artist who uses movement, paint, media and sculpture/installation within a performance-based practice. Her work has been influenced by her experience as a dancer, her study of Buddhism and phenomenology, and her connection to the free jazz tradition. Parker has performed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and The Fridman Gallery (New York), and held residencies at École Normale Supérieure (Paris) and at the Every Women Biennial (New York), among others. Parker has received grants from LMCC in 2013 and Brooklyn Arts Council in 2019. She has previously collaborated with Jo Wood-Brown, Christina Smiros and Luke Stewart, among others. Parker is also co-founder and collaborator of Inner City Projects, a multimedia collaborative work group with Jo Wood Brown, based in New York. She lives and works in New York.
Marisa Michelson and Miriam Parker are Toulmin Fellows through the CBA-National Sawdust Partnership.