Described by The New Yorker magazine as one of the "prime movers of the local avant-garde", and an "exacting avant-classical guitarist" by TimeOut NY, PATRICK HIGGINS is an American composer, guitarist, and producer from New York City, known for his work in experimental and contemporary classical music. Heralded as a "formidable concert music composer" (Boston Globe) and "one of the most gifted guitarists working today" (The Quietus), Higgins has received attention for bridging traditions including baroque chamber music, contemporary noise, and 20th century minimalism. Higgins plays guitar and composes in the band Zs, described by The New York Times as "one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York."
Higgins work has been performed in over 25 countries internationally, both as a composer and a soloist. He has composed works for some of the world's leading ensembles, ranging from chamber orchestra works, percussion cycles, and string quartets to smaller ensembles and soloists. He has scored works for television, museum exhibitions, and films both short-form and feature-length. Since 2013, he has operated Future-Past Studios , a recording studio in upstate NY.
He recently had a solo exhibition of artworks and sheet music, as well as two world premiers, at The Clark Museum in MA, USA. In 2019, he was a curator and headliner of the Le Guess Who festival in Holland. Higgins has performed and presented works at many of the world's largest festivals and venues across the past 12 years, including The Andy Warhol Museum (PA), The Queen Sophia Museum (Madrid), The Broad Museum (LA), SF MOMA, Unsound Festival (Poland), Pioneer Works (NYC), Monom Berlin, Sony Ginza Park (Tokyo), ReWire (Holland), Cleveland MOCA, ICA Boston, Teatro Carignano (Torino IT), Sacrum Profanum (Kracow), Merriweather Post Pavillion, Donau Festival (Austria), Paula Cooper Gallery (NYC), The Queens Museum (NY), Club Unit (Tokyo), Shakespeare Theater (Gdansk), The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and many more.
Higgins currently records for the Other People label, and has previously worked with NNA Tapes, Northern Spy, and Telegraph Harp records.
He is the founding member of AEAEA, a new duo project with electronic musician Nicolas Jaar.
He is endorsed by Albert Augustine guitar strings
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"Patrick Higgins composes with a scholar's historical perspective and a punk's sense of abandon." - PITCHFORK
"Higgins is one of the most gifted guitarists working right now" -The Quietus
"a pioneer of modern experimental music" -East Village Radio
"Mr. Higgins made his guitar chords chime and scrape and judder [...] it was also bright, severe, and specific." - New York Times
"Higgins is a formidable concert-music composer" - The Boston Globe
"New York-based composer Patrick Higgins has settled as one of today's most impressive and fearless sound architects. Dedicating himself to pushing the boundaries of electronic music as did his most notorious predecessors Gyorgy Ligeti and John Cage with classical music, Higgins keeps driving the common rhythmic/melodic acceptations of our time into the corner, shattering the unyielding myths and misconceptions attached to the notions of harmony and dissonance on his way." - Inverted-Audio
"classical composer [...] well known as a gifted guitarist" - The New Yorker
"In a few years Patrick Higgins will be called a legend and Bachanalia a masterpiece." - The Big Takeover
At South-by-Southwest: "it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to name Patrick Higgins the best guitarist of the 2013 event. By some combination of talent and a well-conceived rig, he makes breakneck playing look effortless." -Premier Guitar Magazine
"polyglot NYC composer" and "out-of-the-box classical guitarist"
part of "New York's generation of up-and-coming composers" - Time Out NY
Higgins "guitar gets positively Merzbow-ish" - The Wire
"The overwhelming, assiduous strength Higgins instilled into each picking was palpable" - Downbeat Magazine
"superb [...] meticulous high-velocity guitar patterns [...] it knocked me out" - Chicago Reader
"DO NOT overlook the very limited and stunning Patrick Higgins record! I cannot recommend this record enough!! ...HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION" - Experimedia
"[Bachanalia] is almost unstoppable. Relentlessly pretty. And sounding as though it's been Patrick Higgins' lifetime-achievement goal to sound flawless on guitar [...] Just, the most important part is performance. Watching the flow of [Higgins] music through their entire body floods your senses." - Tiny Mix Tapes
String Quartet No.2 "[Higgins'] ear for sound and craft of vibrating wood presents tremendous composure within a piece teetering on the brink of madness." - Tiny Mix Tapes
STEREO: "The level of ambition and execution in this three-part, 40 minute long composition are powerfully matched, and the level of technique and the sheer amount of polyphony in this piece are actually stunning." -IMPOSE Magazine
"Hearing the musicians bring forth these harsh, fascinating sounds, you could only wonder what [Higgins'] score must look like. I imagined bars of music flecked with metal shavings and rust." - The Brooklyn Rail
"truthfully inhabits the personas of both shredder and composer. We're talking shredder in the Yngwie/Satch paradigm [...yet] Higgins is a legit modern classical entity" -Ad Hoc
String Quartet No.2 is "a seriously well delivered set of ideas, with a lot more emphasis on taste applied to the given thematic material, rather than being programmatic or systematic about breaking established form with juxtapositions. In which sense, it is much more 'now' than the period historically associated with the 'avant-garde'." -Freq UK
"one of our day's most consistent torchbearers of experimental guitar playing, and more generally experimental music and composition." -Boston Hassle
On Glacia:"The result is unnerving, terrifying, yet somehow beautiful, like the manifestation of a conjured deity." - The Big Takeover Magazine
The Art of the Fugue: "In an arrangement by Patrick Higgins, it dramatically calls attention to Bach's advanced sense of time and musical architecture." - WQXR
"the prolific composer and guitarist Patrick Higgins, whose work alternates between strangely delicate contemporary chamber music and the noisy excursions of his project Zs" - Chronogram
Social Death Mixtape - 4 stars - "Higgins' masterful brand of 'de-composition' also entails the imperfection of codified rationality" - Tiny Mix Tapes
