A visionary composer, virtuoso cellist, and interdisciplinary performer, Seth Parker Woods has been challenging audiences for nearly two decades. His works synthesize a polyglot musical upbringing in Houston with his training in cello and electronics at institutions throughout the U.S. and Europe, combining materials from custom, frozen instruments to archival recordings, visual projections, and spoken-word poetry. He speaks here of his concept of “unabashed adornment,” relating it to the notion of self-care during this time of collective uncertainty. His compositions, including Difficult Grace (2020), which uses Jacob Lawrence's paintings from The Migration Series (1940–41) as a visual background, and Iced Bodies (2017), a work inspired by the legacy of the cellist and performance artist Charlotte Moorman, have been performed at numerous international venues, such as the Tate Modern, Seattle Symphony, Basel Ballet, and the Berlin Staatsballet. These works comprise a unique, rich dialogue with the explorations of the mid-century avant-garde. Woods is currently a distinguished visiting scholar at the University at Buffalo. This conversation took place in October and November 2021.◼Origin stories are always overdetermined—all the way to the ostensibly perfect circle drawn by Giotto's shepherd boy in the late-thirteenth century. But because your musical upbringing is so distinctive, I’d love to begin with you sharing a little about your early life.I grew up in Houston, Texas in a family of artists and entrepreneurs. My dad was a gospel and jazz vocalist and his quartet used to rehearse a studio in the basement; they used to rehearse pretty much every week. I have fond memories of my mom bringing me downstairs during their rehearsal breaks to sit behind my godfather's drum kit. I also remember my parents hosting my aunts, uncles, and close friends, and every once in a while they would wake me and my siblings to have us perform Jackson 5 songs—it was the eighties!And how did the cello enter the picture?Another very eighties nod—from my fascination with Susan Sarandon's character in The Witches of Eastwick who played the cello! From there, I went on to study at an elementary school with a wonderful music program, and then to Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). Credit goes to my early teachers, like Mrs. Parker and Mr. Clancey, as well as my exposure to the wide variety of music that was being showcased in Houston: R&B, classical, ballet, jazz at the Menil Collection, and the (ever ubiquitous) mariachi music.My grandfather, Cheyenne, comes from a long line of Black cowboys. He grew up in Weimar, the first German settlement in Texas; he carried that tradition with him after fighting in the war and making his way to Houston. That history and lineage stays with me today as I find ways to keep telling the stories of the South and those linked to it. I have fond memories of him riding the trail and joining up with the cowboys in the rodeo that would convene at the Astrodome in Houston. For many years after his passing, I felt that I lost touch with that side of my heritage, but through my mom those stories of who we are remains vibrant.Houston, whether I knew it or not, was a great bedrock for me, and after all these years I continue to find interesting connections to the place I call home, and the place from which I started out on a more traditional route in music. If we look deeper, the area I grew up in, Third Ward, has historically been a vibrant breeding ground for Black artists and thinkers. Interestingly, it feels as if I was meant to come out of Third Ward, given my project Difficult Grace and my work with migration and ideas of adornment. It is no coincidence.That happens with history, it has all been there the entire time. It also seems to presage the subsequent polyglot nature of your work. I’d love to learn more about your route from Houston to the shadows of “canonical” mid-century art and avant-garde music.That's a funny way of putting it, but yes, it explains how I started and ventured from the traditional classical route and became the artist I am today. When I was sixteen, I attended a winter intersession at Juilliard. While there, I met the late cellist Andre Emelianoff, who later became a very influential teacher and mentor for me. That experience set me on a path to become a professional musician. Mr. E. exposed me to what was possible beyond the traditional path. From Houston, I wound up making my way to Chicago, and then eventually landed back in New York City many years later, working with the great cellist Frederick Zlotkin of the New York City Ballet. During this time, I met Ursula Oppens and Tania Leon, two iconic artists who became hugely influential mentors and colleagues to me.I also had a long interlude in Switzerland and Germany where I ping-ponged between Baroque and interactive electronic music, which was an ideal setting to think through this very Eurocentric nexus of Stockhausen and Fluxus—the canonical intermedia of the midcentury. By 2012, I was studying for my doctorate in the UK, and I received a performance invitation from Tate Modern, which was putting up the first large scale retrospective of the late Aldo Tambellini. It wound up being a pivotal event.You have had the good fortune of working directly with some of your most important art-historical and musicological antecedents, both through personal relationships and sustained archival engagements. This is a bit of a broad question, but how do you construct your own relationship with (living) history?To think about that, I’ll need to rewind a bit. During my years in Switzerland, I was working closely with the American performer and composer Mike Svoboda, who had been living in Europe since the 1970s and worked very closely with Karlheinz Stockhausen. During those years with Mike, I had the opportunity to begin learning about a new world of experimentalism that I had never been introduced to during my training in the United States. I was introduced to the worlds of Dada and Fluxus, and had the opportunity to work with seminal composers like Georges Aperghis, Helmut Lachenmann, and Giorgio Netti. The pedagogical and creative revelations I was experiencing were a direct result of being given space to explore and experiment with forms of performative practice that I did not know existed. Through learning experimental works, I discovered Charlotte Moorman. To be honest, when I first saw a photograph of Moorman, who was a cellist, I had no idea who she was. That image, which I would later discover was her performing Jim McWilliams's Ice Music for London, set in motion my fascination with her, which eventually lead to me creating Iced Bodies.In 2012, I was invited to take part in two seminal works of artist Aldo Tambellini at Tate Modern in the Tanks. Prior to arriving, I barely knew who Tambellini was, let alone his extensive back catalogue. In looking through Tambellini's archives, I discovered this large-scale work, titled Black Zero, which I would later recreate for Art Frieze Week in London as part of his retrospective. Black Zero, for improvising cellist, seven projectors, a recording of Ishmael Reed reciting his poetry, layered electronics, and weather balloon, was originally presented at the Black Gate Theatre, which Tambellini founded in New York City in 1967. Upon reflection, Tambellini's raw genius exposed me to new ways to imagine immersive polyphony through interdisciplinary collaboration that continues to shake me to my core. So, to answer your question, I was less interested in constructing an active awareness of relationship building, and more interested in trying to be present and deliver the stories as best as I could, not realizing that I too was carving out a space within these extended histories. The fact that I can do so continues to serve my practice and surprise me to this day.And that provides the perfect lead up to Iced Bodies. I’d love for you to share a bit more about this work. The image of you clad in a wetsuit, wrapped around a carbon black, ice-clad cello, was a searing introduction to your work for me.Yes, exactly. The work I studied during my years in Switzerland, alongside the collaboration with Tambellini, freed me and provided a space to rethink the ways in which artists and musicians—as well as poets, dancers, etc.—could express themselves. In past interviews, I’ve stated that I never sought to become an activist or create politically aligned work. To be honest, I still feel uncomfortable and scared at times when presenting Iced Bodies, due to the vulnerable and charged state I must inhabit, and my “proximity” to these very important sociopolitical issues and stigmas, which are all in service of commenting on the truths of past and present histories.When I returned to the States, I was met with sobering truths surrounding police brutality and corruption within Chicago and other major cities. The many thousands of court cases and complaints filed against police departments, the settlements of which total more than twenty-eight million dollars in Chicago alone, speak to the endemic mental trauma and wrongful deaths at the hands of rogue police officers. Faced with this realization, I felt emboldened to say something, and that is when I decided to create Iced Bodies as an ode to those neglected bodies, and those that have now gone through to a space for all to reflect and heal. Around the same time, I discovered that Charlotte Moorman's archive had recently been acquired by Northwestern University's Special Collections Library, and that the Block Museum was in the midst of launching the largest retrospective to date of Moorman and her beautiful contribution to the fields of art and music. By a chance introduction, I was given the opportunity to meet the curators of Moorman's archive and to help organize the work around McWilliams's Ice Music for London, which provided me with ample resources to begin conceptualizing and creating Iced Bodies. From there, I enlisted the composer and sound artist, our mutual friend, Spencer Topel, as creative collaborator.And from Moorman's frozen archive came the germ of the piece? I am continuously struck by your rigorous engagement with archival sources, something I was trained to do as an art historian, but is far from universal among creators. Not that it should be, but it simply strikes me that you have a decidedly historical, or maybe even historiographic, way of working.That's very kind of you! As we studied the original work to understand where Moorman and McWilliams were trying to take Ice Music for London in 1978, we found a path to both continue its legacy and diverge from it at the same time. Conversations with McWilliams, Joan Jeanrenaud, who was the second cellist to perform Ice Music for London, and archival letters between the creative duo shed light on two things: the use of color in the ice sculpture and the attempts at amplifying its sound. From 1973 to 1978, McWilliams would request via telegram that Moorman have a colored dye added to the ice sculptures that would match the flowers she’d adorn herself with in performance. In speaking with McWilliams, there was no direct significance to the color choices other than embellishment. When I learned of this, we decided to dye the entire cello obsidian, partially because the color had yet to be used by Moorman, and also to reflect the visual of the black body on display seen through objectification, fetishization and fear mongering, with references to lynchings and the bruised, uncovered, and neglected bodies that were broadcast in the aftermath of the Ferguson protests in 2014.The other creative element that informed so much of this work was the sound. By 1978, McWilliams and Moorman attempted to amplify the decaying ice cello with minimal success. Spencer and I decided to imbed hydrophones and piezo pickups inside the cellos we’d freeze, which would both allow us to sonify the playing of the cello and broadcast sound back through it, which was informed by experiments conducted by Adrien Mamou-Mani in Paris and a collaboration with composer Patricia Alessandrini. In addition to playing the cello, I recorded a few poems by Nayyirah Waheed from her book Salt, with the hope that those words, coupled with the processed sounds of the ice cello, would give voice to those struggling with auditory hallucination and serve as a commentary on schizophrenia and those suffering from isolation and neglect.Can you share a bit more about the work itself?Iced Bodies is an interactive performance installation for cellist and electronic instrumental ice sculpture that seeks to dramatize the ephemerality of matter in phase transition. The inherent vulnerability of a melting ice sculpture—with its eventual destruction—serves as a commentary to overlooked and undocumented cases of mental disability within underrepresented populations. This work serves as an ode to these struggling minds, and bruised, tattered, and broken bodies on display. Vocal emanations from within the cello serve to bridge sociopolitical themes in this work to the introspective and personal experience of the audience. In addition to sounds captured and activated through the ice, a disembodied male voice is heard reciting poetic phrases diffused through spatialized glass sculptures. The sounds of scrapping, carving, mimetic gestures of cello playing, and stuttering fragmentation of Waheed's words serve as sonic feedback loops, evoking the isolation and neglect of voice hearers who are battling mental disorders. The audience at the end is left to revel in the visual image of freed bodies, represented by shards of ice, electronic entrails, and the sounds of an unrestrained voice liberated from the ice, symbolized by the performer clutching a sound- emitting transducer.There are many complex layers folded inside this work that make it a social experience. Two important layers highlight Moorman's ice cello legacy and her feminism, and also seek to amplify inherently silenced voices. The work sadly has an eerie sense of timeliness about it, but it also encourages those who show up to experience it to come together and unite. It has, I think, become a site of reflection and healing for a lot of people, and we are eager to bring the work to Minneapolis in January 2022.In the interval, you have been completing a major new work entitled Difficult Grace. This piece again exemplifies your substantial archival engagement with sources ranging from visual art to music and poetry—this time with a decided focus on creators of the African diaspora. I’d love to learn more about the genesis of that piece.I officially premiered that show when I was artist-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony from 2018 to 2020. That residency coincided with the opening of a new concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center, and I was delighted to have the chance to create a series of interactive works for myself and to program for the symphony. In retrospect, by working with all these distinctive artists I commissioned through the symphony, we birthed a very interesting world of projects run through with themes of translation, migration, and self-introspection. I’ll never forget that night. It was electric, and I felt so proud of what we had created. Sadly, that would be my last performance for a live audience for more than a year, due to the pandemic.The title of the piece is taken from a line by Dudley Randall's poem “Primitives,” which appeared in a collection of his titled Cities Burning. In the poem, Randall vividly evokes a state of unrest and poses a scenario where people are forced to destroy society in order to rebuild it more justly and more beautifully, having been faced with a society that was built to destroy lives. That act of rebuilding via revolt—all the while extending grace—is never easy, but if people can imagine the beauty that could come from it, then maybe it might be worth it. While I was creating this work with the composer Fredrick Gifford, I was also exploring the artwork of Jacob Lawrence. The panels from Lawrence's iconic The Migration Series form an important part of the visual backdrop and inspiration for the show. Difficult Grace also included the artwork of Barbara Earl Thomas, a protégé of Lawrence, with whom I’d begun working at the start of my tenure with the Seattle Symphony.The piece is informed by what I have begun calling “unabashed adornment”—pouring into oneself over and over as a means of what others call self-care. The idea that we can layer ourselves in such a beautiful way, even in the midst of uncertainty, and maybe give ourselves and those around us a moment of grace and respite.I love that concept—the kind of baroque maximalism of this piece contrasts so vividly with the austere neo-minimalism of Iced Bodies. How does Difficult Grace unfold, particularly your hybrid role at the center of the action?Within the work, I am more than a cellist. I am narrator, preacher, scared child, looking and searching. There is an immersion in speech, electronics, and live cello, with a kind of intimate spotlight that holds it all together. As a concert experience, you hear me before you see me, reciting the text from Randall, and the rest unfolds slowly over time. Shortly after the initial entrance, recorded layers of my voice and cello enter and begin to swirl around the room. As the polyphonic voices cadence, a coda begins with the luminous appearance of Barbara Earl Thomas's stunning work Grace, which is a portrait of a paperboy holding up a sign with the word “grace” strewn across it.The concert continues on a journey through pieces by the British composer Monty Adkins, which is framed around a film by Zoe McLean. That segues into music composed by Nathalie Joachim, a Haitian American composer who deeply engages with sonic ecologies, migration, and diasporic narratives. Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series panels, chosen from the split collection housed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection, create the backdrop for my recitation of texts drawn from the Chicago Defender, which was once the nation's most influential weekly newspaper printed by a Black publishing house. One of the most interesting discoveries that was made during the composition of Difficult Grace was that in 1915, an important change took place in terms of the self-description of journalists writing for the Defender, as “the race” suddenly replaced all other descriptors for Black people. So over and over within the work, you’ll hear me continuously speak about “the race, race woman, race farmers.” It is an incredible reclaiming of language in a way that barely existed prior to 1915. The power of reciting these words in a concert setting has impacted my psyche, and it remains a challenge to separate myself as a performer from the human on display. Something I am still considering while working on the piece is the way I position myself within this text, which still feels sobering and relevant. It's very knotty to work in this way.What's on the horizon for you? Making plans in a perpetual state of mid-Covid has begun to feel like an exercise in futility.Well, Difficult Grace is available through digital platforms, but I will presenting it for the first time in Toronto this March. It worked out quite well because there are two Canadian composers on the program, so it is kind of a homecoming for them. The larger, revamped version of Difficult Grace will premiere in November 2022 at the 92nd Street Y, and then we will begin a formal tour of the show.You know, I have struggled a lot with what the future might have in store for me. I think this pandemic has given me space to decompress from an unhealthy amount of working and creating, and it has afforded me time to extend grace to myself while I figure out what I really want and need in this moment. A partial answer to your question is that academia (in its fullest sense) probably does not need to be a part of my life right now, and that I need to fold more into the world as an independent artist. Between the academic obligations, the development of the final commissioned works in this iteration of Difficult Grace, planning a tour, and recording my upcoming album, I’m finding it hard to answer the question: “How does one be a fully present and functioning academic and also a full-fledged artist?” For now, this searching has led me to pour myself into the narratives and storytelling found in Difficult Grace. This feels like the most sound-oriented project I have done in a very long time; the source material and personal stories have directly informed a creative path for me. I continually find deeper links to my own personal and family history in bringing this work to life.Right now, I am just trying to run with it and continue telling stories of the people. I think Difficult Grace is a work for the people that is directly derived by the stories of the people—it's social art and commentary. Coming up, I am looking forward to diving into additional archives and historical bodies of work that will inform new pieces as part of an unfolding narrative—maybe trying to address the collective stories of a nation?