Richard Reed Parry (born October 4, 1977) is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, best known as a core member of the Grammy Award-winning indie rock band Arcade Fire, where he plays a wide variety of instruments, often switching between guitar, double bass, drums, celesta, keyboards, and accordion. Life and career Parry comes from a musical family. His late father was David Parry of the folk band Friends of Fiddler's Green. His mother, Caroline Balderston Parry, was a poet and musician, and his sister, Evalyn Parry, is a theatre artist, songwriter, and spoken word performer. Parry attended Canterbury High School in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and was one of a dozen members of the Literary Arts program (first generation). His classmates include Stargate: Atlantis writer Martin Gero and The Holmes Show comedian Kurt Smeaton. In the mid 1990s, he worked summers at a vegetarian camp in near Chelsea, Quebec, called Camp Au Grand Bois. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he studied electroacoustics and contemporary dance at Concordia University in Montreal. The Bell Orchestre was formed in 2005, along with Sarah Neufeld, Tim Kingsbury as well as Stefan Schneider and French horn player Pietro Amato. Parry primarily plays double bass and is the de facto producer. Bell Orchestre released As Seen Through Windows with Arts & Crafts Records on March 10, 2009. It was recorded with John Mcentire in Soma Electric Studios in Chicago, Illinois. The album since won a 2011 Juno Award for best instrumental album. A long-time core member of Arcade Fire, he co-produced and collaborated on the debut EP, Arcade Fire, before the first lineup of the band fell apart. Helping to reform and recreate the band, Parry brought in Bell Orchestre bandmate Sarah Neufeld, and New International Standards bandmates, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Gara. He has also made musical contributions to albums by The National, Little Scream, Sufjan Stevens, The Unicorns and Islands. On the latter's critically acclaimed 2006 album Return to the Sea, he played several instruments, sang background vocals and arranged strings, and appeared with the band's 2016 10-year-anniversary shows where they played the album in full. Parry has also performed in a cover band called Phi Slamma Jamma along with Arcade Fire bandmates Will Butler, Jeremy Gara, and Tim Kingsbury. The group performed at the 2011 POP Montreal Festival as well as the 2012 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Festival. On January 20, 2007, Parry returned