Van Dyke Parks - New Projects

New Projects

Parks has completed work with Brian Wilson on a new narrative song cycle entitled That Lucky Old Sun (A Narrative).

He also contributed to the new record by The Shortwave Set, titled Replica Sun Machine, which features a 24-piece orchestra and further input from John Cale. This was released on the 12th of May 2008 by Wall of Sound.

Parks worked with Inara George on a record released in 2008, An Invitation, and they performed two songs together on 8 January 2008 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, as part of the program Concrete Frequency: Songs of the City.

Parks is a guest musician on Echo by Mari Iijima, released in August 2009. Iijima sang "Calypso," on Parks' album Tokyo Rose.

In 2009, Parks performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Parks performed with Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder on the documentary broadcast on Dec. 13, 2009 on the History Channel. They played "Do Re Mi" and reportedly a couple of other Guthrie songs that were excluded from the final edit.

Parks performed as a guest artist on the Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool album released in 2009.

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    One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.
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