Legendary New Zealand-born experimental composer and sound art pioneer Annea Lockwood returns to Black Truffle with On Fractured Ground / Skin Resonance, her third release for the label.
Having recently celebrated her 85th birthday, Lockwood shows no sign of slowing down in her exploration of new sound sources and collaborations with an ever-growing intergenerational pool of performers—here with Vanessa Tomlinson. Her creative vibrancy is alive as ever on the two recent works presented here, which demonstrate both her engagement with the social dimensions of sound and the deeply reflective, meditative aspect of her art.
On Fractured Ground derives from material recorded with Pedro Rebelo and Georgios Varoutsos for the soundtrack of Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon's opera-film, History of the Present (2023). Working together in Belfast, Lockwood, Rebelo and Varoutsos made extensive recordings of the city's "peace lines", the dozens of walls erected since the beginning of the Troubles in the late 1960s to separate Catholic and Protestant areas of the city. Struck by the immensity of these barriers, "the brutal way they sever neighbourhoods", Lockwood and her collaborators focused not on the sound environment of the city, but on the walls themselves, playing them as gigantic resonant instruments, using their hands and objects such as stones and leaves. Continuing to work in her studio with the material collected for the soundtrack after its completion, Lockwood composed the work presented here, occupying a space somewhere between her own extended-technique percussion music and the Cagean tradition of hyper-amplified small sounds. From deep, gong-like metallic tolling to dry scrapes and uneasy groans, the piece's sustained attention to single sounds derived from unorthodox sources draws a line all the way back to Lockwood's classic
Glass World (1967-1970). Its spaciousness and delicacy are at odds with the dark historical background of the Troubles, creating a moving listening experience somehow haunted by the shadow of violence and conflict.
Skin Resonance is a collaboration with Australian composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson. Developed through conversations in which the two discussed the idea of "sonic attraction", the piece focuses on Tomlinson's relationship to the bass drum, reflecting on the complex web of connections embodied in this seemingly simply instrument, which is at once "animal, wood, and metal". Approaching the instrument in a suitably elemental fashion, Tomlinson's performance strips away conventional technique to explore the resonance and timbral properties of skin, drum, and metal hardware, producing overlapping waves of texture that at times seem closer to wind swishing through leaves or the ocean than anything usually associated with a drum. Emphasising the symbiotic relationship between performer and instrument, Tomlinson's voice is heard at times, exploring the field of associations and connections the bass drum suggests to her: "Maybe the bass drum skin is an ear as well?" Accompanied by insightful liner notes on both pieces and photographs documenting the recording of On Fractured Ground and a performance of Skin Resonance, this LP is a moving testament to the engagement, generosity, and openness that sustain Annea Lockwood's work, still finding new directions after more than fifty years of activity.
New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood (born 1939) brings vibrant energy, ceaseless curiosity, and a profound sense of openness to her music. Lockwood's lifelong fascination with the visceral effects of sound in our environments and through our bodies—the way sounds unfold and their myriad "life spans"—serves as the focal point for works ranging from concert music to performance art to multimedia installations.
Annea Lockwood moved to England in 1961, studying composition at the Royal College of Music, London, attending summer courses at Darmstadt, and completing her studies in Cologne and Holland, taking courses in electronic music with Gottfried Michael Koenig. She felt a strong connection to such American composers as
Pauline Oliveros,
John Cage, and the Sonic Arts Union (Ashley, Behrman, Mumma, Lucier). In 1973 composer Ruth Anderson invited her to teach at Hunter College, CUNY, and Lockwood moved to the US, settling in Crompond, NY. She is an Emerita Professor at Vassar College.
During the 1960s, Lockwood created works such as the
Glass Concerts, initiating her focus on timbre and new sound sources. In synchronous homage to Christian Barnard's pioneering heart transplants, Lockwood began a series of
Piano Transplants (1969-82) in which defunct pianos were burned, drowned, beached, and planted in an English garden.
Piano Burning continues to be performed around the globe.
Lockwood's deep affection for all things water-related is evident throughout her catalog. Her attention to performance works focused on environmental sounds and life narratives began in the 1970s and '80s with
World Rhythms and
A Sound Map of the Hudson River.
A Sound Map of the Danube weaves field recordings of the rivers with recorded stories of the people living and working on the water.
Delta Run features a recorded conversation with the sculptor Walter Wincha near the time of his death. Her 2016 tribute to the composer
Pauline Oliveros,
bayou-borne, for Pauline, is a graphic score; a map of the six converging bayous in Houston, Texas, where Oliveros was born.
Collaboration and improvisation are vital features of Lockwood's output.
Jitterbug, commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for the dance eyeSpace, incorporates Lockwood's recordings of aquatic insects, and three improvising musicians working from photographs of rock surfaces. She has worked with engineer and sound designer Robert Bielecki on devices such as the Sound Ball, created for
Three Short Stories and an Apotheosis in which a ball containing six small speakers and a receiver is rolled, swung on a long cord, and passed around the audience. Lockwood and Bielecki also collaborated on the outdoor installation
Wild Energy (2014), which resides in the permanent collection of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts and draws on geophysical and atmospheric infra and ultra sound sources transposed into the human hearing range.
Lockwood has received commissions from numerous ensembles and solo performers, including Bang On A Can, baritone Thomas Buckner, pianists Sarah Cahill, Lois Svard, and Jennifer Hymer, the Holon Scratch Orchestra, Essential Music, Yarn/Wire, and Issue Project Room.
Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals such as Lucerne Festival, Tectonics Athens Festival, Signale Graz, Counterflows International Festival of Music and Art, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and many others.
Her music is recorded on the Lovely, XI, Mutable, Pogus, EM Records (Japan), Rattle Records,
Recital, Harmonia Mundi, CRI,
Superior Viaduct,
Black Truffle,
Room40, New World, Gruenrekorder, and Moving Furniture Records.
Hearing Studies, co-authored with Ruth Anderson, was published by Open Space in 2021.
