For the last thirty years, Theo Parrish has established himself as a singular producer, an influential remixer, and a cornerstone of of the hardy and prolific Detroit house music scene. Beyond his solo work, he is the founder of the Sound Signature label and a member of the house music supergroup 3 Chairs, along with Moodymann, Rick Wilhite, and Marcellus Pittman. Respected as much for his seamless sets spanning disco, jazz, soul, funk, and blues as for his cultural leadership, Parrish spent his career at the forefront of a movement to retain electronic dance music’s original identity as a proudly – and defiantly – Black art form.
Born in 1972 in Washington, D.C., and raised in Chicago’s South Side house music scene, Theo Parrish moved to Detroit in the 1990s, where he met the legendary Moodymann. In 1997, he released his first 12-inch record on Moodymann’s KDJ label before launching his own imprint, Sound Signature. In the early 2000s, he became a resident DJ at APT in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, later holding a residency at London’s Plastic People until its closure in 2015. A central figure in underground dance music, Parrish gained further acclaim with his Ugly Edits – a series of unauthorized reinterpretations of dance music classics, distributed clandestinely in hand-painted record sleeves. His most recent release, Free Myself featuring Maurissa Rose (Sound Signature, 2023), continues his tradition of deep, soul-infused house. Currently a resident DJ at Nowadays in New York, where his sets often stretch into the early hours, his appearance in Paris is a rare and highly anticipated event.
Founded in 2016 and based in New York, Blank Forms is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in interdisciplinary and time-based practices such as experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. Its mission is to develop new frameworks for preserving, nurturing, and presenting the work of both historical and contemporary artists to a broad audience. Blank Forms provides curatorial support, artist residencies, commissions, and publications to help artists document, distribute, and expand their practice.
Matéo Garcia, a French designer and sculptor born in 1989, explores the boundaries between scenographic design and sound creation. As the founder of GARSAC Diffusion, he designs sculptural speakers and innovative audio systems, seamlessly integrating sound spatialization into his projects, influenced by Roland Cahen. For the Bourse de Commerce, Matéo Garcia has envisioned a sound system that combines technical precision with industrial aesthetics, drawing inspiration from Tadao Ando's work as well as laboratory measuring equipment and anodized aluminum aerospace devices. Featuring dual constant directivity high-frequency horns and a bass line composed of eight equidistant subwoofers, this system ensures a homogeneous distribution of bass and exceptional performance in the lowest frequencies.
