Petra Haden, daughter of legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden was introduced to a wide variety of musical stimulation at an early age. She soon developed her extraordinary ability to vocalize the sounds of the instruments she heard in the jazz and classical music that was now a steady part of her musical appetite. Blessed with an uncanny musical ear, she began forming arrangements in her head, translating the works of favorite artists Pat Metheny, Cocteau Twins and minimalist composer Steve Reich into her own unique musical language.
In the early ’90s Petra, her sister Rachel, and friend Anna Waronker formed the Los Angeles-based indie-pop group That Dog, which quickly became a staple of the L.A. club circuit. They released a self-titled debut LP in 1994. An energetic and quirky punk-pop effort highlighted by sunny harmonies and the intriguing use of violin and cello, the record became a college radio hit. The follow-up project, “Totally Crushed Out!”, was released a year later, and the group’s third recording, “Retreat From the Sun,” appeared in 1997, and the band’s breakup was announced that September.
Petra recorded a solo album “Imaginaryland,” which was released in 1996. In recent years, she has cultivated a number of important musical relationships reflected in her collaborations with Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda and Victoria Williams – the most recent being with the celebrated guitarist and composer Bill Frisell.
(bio courtesy True North Records)
Stephen Prina lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles, California. One-person surveys of his work have been mounted in It was the best he could do at the moment, 1992, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen Rotterdam and To the People of Frankfurt am Main: At Least Three Types of Inaccessibility, 2000, Frankfurter Kunstverein, as well as the one-person exhibition Monochrome Painting, 1989, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, P.S. 1 Museum, and the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery. Concerts of his music have been staged in Athens, Beacon, Berlin, Boston, Dijon, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Los Angeles, New York, Osaka, Seoul, and Tokyo. Recordings of his music are available on Drag City, Chicago, and Organ of Corti, Los Angeles. He is Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.
