page_title: Patrick Higgins (musician)
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Patrick Higgins (musician) / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Wet Ink Ensemble performing Higgins' work "Emptyset [0,0]" from TOCSIN, at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn NY, November 2016
context_page_description: Patrick Higgins is an American avant-garde composer, guitarist, and producer from New York City, known for his work in experimental and contemporary classical music. He plays guitar and composes in the ensemble Zs, described by The New York Times as "one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York." His work as composer traverses the styles of the European avant-garde and the tradition of post-minimalist Downtown New York music.
  He has received attention for his unique style of guitar playing and his work as a composer, heralded as "one of the most gifted guitarists working today" and a "formidable concert music composer". After a performance at South By Southwest music festival in Austin, TX he was named the "best guitarist of the 2013 event" by Premier Guitar Magazine.
context_section_description: Higgins was born in 1984 in Manhattan and attended high school at the Urban School of San Francisco.  He returned to New York City in 2002 to attend Columbia University, earning a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Comparative Literature.
  Higgins joined long-running New York ensemble Zs in the summer of 2012, helping to embark on a busy schedule of touring and recording in 2013 and 2014. The new group's premier concert was reviewed by the New York Times in August 2012, with Ben Ratliff writing "It’s never wanted to be one thing, and now, with the addition of the guitarist Patrick Higgins and the drummer Greg Fox, it’s something else again." During this period Zs toured extensively through North America on three occasions, and toured internationally across 20 countries, including four tours of Europe and a tour of Japan in early 2013. The first recording to feature Higgins and new member Greg Fox was Zs' 2014 release "Grain", released on Northern-Spy Records.
  Higgins co-composed, played guitar, and produced Zs' 2015 record Xe, which is the band's most critically acclaimed record to date.  Xe earned an 8.0 from Pitchfork, the highest score yet given to Zs by the prominent music magazine. The Wall Street Journal described the group's performance on 'Xe' as "hypnotic and harsh at once, with an ability to mesmerize while keeping a listener at attention."  At the end of 2015, Rolling Stone named Xe number 3 on its list of the Best Avant-Garde Records of the year.  The album and artwork for Xe were purchased by the SF MOMA and are part of the museum's permanent collection.
  As a composer, he has written numerous works for string quartet, chamber orchestra, and solo instruments.  In 2013, a double LP of Higgins' String Quartet No.2 was released on Ex Cathedra Records, along with a work entitled Glacia, an electronic re-composition of the string quartet performance.  NNA Tapes released the Social Death Mixtape in the fall of 2015, a record presenting a wide array of Higgins' avant-garde works of Chamber Music and featuring compositions for harpsichord, string ensemble, solo violin, guitar, and electronics. Tiny Mix Tapes gave Social Death Mixtape 4 out of 5 stars, citing the record as a "masterful brand of de-composition".  Later that year, Telegraph Harp released Higgins' Bachanalia, an electro-acoustic record of classical guitar performances of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.  The record features a series of acoustic guitar performances, each electronically processed and re-amplified in differing ways.  Bachanalia was heralded as a "masterpiece" and a virtuoso recording and helped to solidify Higgins' reputation as among the most innovative guitarists of his era.  The recording of the album took place in two different churches, one in Brooklyn, New York and one in Hudson, New York, with the quality of space and natural reverb entering in as a feature of the musical performance.  The recording "winds up as an outstanding album of classical music that also happens to explore the same ideas and notions regarding space that inspired Alvin Lucier [...]".  September 2017 saw the release of a collaborative recording called "EVRLY MVSIC", released on NNA Tapes.  The record featured semi-improvised acoustic duets of Higgins on guitar and violinist Josh Modney of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
  In 2016, Higgins composed the score for the feature film As You Are (dir. by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte), which was awarded the prestigious Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
  On November 3 and 4, 2016, Pioneer Works presented a multi-media concert and art installation of Higgins' chamber music in Red Hook, Brooklyn entitled TOCSIN: Three New Works by Patrick Higgins.  The concert featured Higgins' third string quartet composition SQ3 performed by the Mivos Quartet, as well as the world premiere of TOCSIN performed by virtuoso pianist Vicky Chow and the world premiere of Emptyset [0,0] for chamber orchestra, performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble.  The concert featured an immersive sculptural and video art installation which was de
caption: Wet Ink Ensemble performing Higgins' work "Emptyset [0,0]" from TOCSIN, at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn NY, November 2016
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