Press
A Sound Map of the Danube (Lovely Music)
During the late 1960s, while she was living in London, sound artist Annea Lockwood initiated her River Archive, with the declared intention of recording all the world's springs, streams and rivers. It was a project that might have been hatched in a story by Jorge Luis Borges, a patently unrealizable goal brought into tantalising existence through mere mention of it. Lockwood now readily acknowledges the deliberate absurdity of its ambition yet river recordings have occasionally surfaced in her subsequent work, starting with her early 1970s installation at New York's Kitchen, Play The Ganges Backwards One More Time, Sam. Her absorbing 1989 release A Sound Map of the Hudson River (LOVELY MUSIC) followed the length of that watercourse from a trill in the high Adirondacks to a crescendo at Staten Island.
Lockwood loves rivers for the layered complexity of their sound, their intricate internal cross-rhythms and rich pitch patterns. In addition there's the fine irony that each recording is both generic and irreducibly unique, that rivers trickle or roar perennially and also in each moment. Rivers are fundamentally repetitive yet alive with continuously changing spectral detail. Approaching such phenomena, the essence of Lockwood's compositional act has been discovery through attentive listening rather than radical intervention.
A Sound Map of the Danube featured initially as a surround sound installation at the Donau festival in Austria in 2005. Between the end of 2001 and the summer of 2004 Lockwood intensively collected field recordings, made not only from the bank but also by situating microphones below the water's surface. Her epic aural tracing of the Danube from the Black Forest to the Black Sea involves documentation from 59 sites interleaved with 13 interviews with individuals whose lives have been shaped by the river. Their words in various languages, translated into English for an accompanying printed text, register the range of its significance as a flowing host for manufacturers, sailors, engineers, fishermen and poets. Birdsong, sheep bleating, the hum of aquatic insects, the rumble of engines, church bells ringing, swimmers splashing and those human accents of varied reminiscence thicken the texture of this auditory journey, opening up vertical cross-sections of natural and cultural reference.
Of course, the sounds of water itself are beguiling; they resonate psychologically with our own interior flows, our awareness of time and our capacity to reflect. There's fascination in the elemental; an aesthetic pleasure that's also a way of understanding. In my listening, there's a confluence between this deeply resonant 167-minute work and the "earish" rivers of James Joyce that feed into Cage's Roaratorio along with Ives's Housatonic, Thoreau's Merrimack and countless other real and imagined waterways. With clarity and grace Lockwood's Danube comprehends interdependence, those complex relationships that embed the routine procedures of daily human life within a continuum that extends from forces operating in geological time to an insect's ephemerality.
- Julian Cowley, Musicworks
Issue 101 summer 2008
A Sound Map of the Danube (Lovely Music)
In 2010, Annea Lockwood will see her 40th year as a river-recording expert. In 1989 she released "A sound map of the Hudson river" on this very label and now, after five trips to Europe over the 2001-2004 temporal span, a triple CD documenting the forms of life inside and across the Danube, the second longest European river. The set comes with a real map tracing the course of the Danube from the German Black Forest to the Black Sea where it ends; here we can also read the English translations of the interviews realized by the author for the project, the interviewees including characters as different as teachers, fishermen, police officers, pension owners and artists. Lockwood recorded all the available voices - waters, animals and humans whose daily activity revolves around the big flux - assembling them with typical mastery and an evident inner ear, which is what distinguishes a serious environmental artist from those who just flick a switch, roll the tape and wait while picking their nose. This particular sensitiveness determines that every element possesses the same weight in the composition, although the almost perennial gurgling flow constitutes an ever-present reminder of who the lead actor is. As it often happens, the deepest levels of introspection are reached through simple means: the composer chose to put under focus well determinate sonic features, by which the listener is accompanied in regular cycles. Especially noteworthy is the musical quality of the water wash - gulping plops, dripping melodies, dynamic modifications, violent bursts at times. This is something that the composer perfectly describes in her notes: "...the river has agency; it composes itself, shaping its sounds by the way it sculpts its banks". Of the three records, the most fascinating is probably the first, which comprises the tolling of bell towers whose majesty seems to rise directly from the undercurrents. Highlights of an important release, worthy of every single minute of the attention that you'll give it.
- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
June 2008
"Luminescence" on New Music for Baritone and Chamber Orchestra (Mutable Music)
Baritone Thomas Buckner has been making innovative music for over thirty years, working with players as diverse as Roscoe Mitchell and Jerome Bourdellon and exploring the no man's land between improvisation and composition. New Music for Baritone and Chamber Orchestra opens with "Luminescence", a cycle of songs by the continually underrated Annea Lockwood, setting poetry by Etel Adnan. There is nothing overtly virtuosic in the writing, as Lockwood always avoids such showiness; rather, melodies are continually juxtaposed with elemental sounds, the poems' seascapes are conjured up by gently swooping clarinets, splashes of trumpet, ghostly waves of strings. Buckner personifies the endlessly mutating surf at one moment and the wise comforter in the face of death at the next, speaking, singing and whispering his way through these evocative settings.
- Marc Medwin, Signal to Noise: the quarterly journal of improvised, experimental & unusual music
Issue #50, summer 2008
Thousand Year Dreaming & floating world (Pogus)
"Thousand Year Dreaming" - composed by Annea Lockwood in 1990 and originally issued on What Next? - derives from an improvisation called "Nautilus", conceived the year before by Lockwood with Art Baron and Scott Robinson. The definitive line-up for this version also comprises Libby Van Cleve, Jon Gibson, J.D. Parran, Michael Pugliese, John Snyder, Charles Wood and Peter Zummo. It's a very sensual tapestry, whose ritual aspect is enhanced by the fairly unusual counterpoints happening between different instrumental families. The most evident feature resides in the exploration of ample resonant spaces, greatly highlighted by the timbres of didjeridoos and conch shell trumpets which, together with a variety of exotic percussion, alter the reality of an otherwise tranquil landscape by engaging sweet-sounding contrasts with clarinets, English horn and oboe, the trombones acting sparingly as elements standing halfway through apparently distant worlds. The composer describes the idea for this piece as "the gradual awakening and release of sonic energy"; indeed the call-and-response mechanism at the basis of this music is a nice representation of that process which, except for slightly more agitated drum patterns appearing towards the end, remains well visible throughout, as listeners can follow the development of a primal impulse into a fully fledged creature step by step. The reissue is completed by "Floating world", a 1999 collage of splendid field recordings commissioned by the author to all her friends working in that area, who were asked to contribute sounds from locations "of personal spiritual significance to them". The prominently aquatic character of the track, enriched by repeated cameos from the local fauna, made me recollect about Alvin Curran's "Maritime Rites". But even in other circumstances, such as Lockwood's seaming of Steve Peters' oak tree branches-cum-wind and Ruth Anderson's sonogram of her own jugular plus a lake in Montana, we're totally in rapture with the exquisite limpidness of these unprocessed sources, sealed by a conclusive, soul-stirring moan - an aeroplane, a power station, I don't want to know - which leaves us ever doubtful, yet serenely detached at one and the same time.
- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
Nov 2007
Thousand Year Dreaming & floating world (Pogus)
"For me, the didjeridu is the sound of the earth's core pulsing serenely, and expression of life force." Lines like that and track titles like "the Chi stirs" might tempt the cynical old birds amongst you to reach for the bourbon and packet of smokes, but the breathtaking beauty of what Annea Lockwood does with the venerable instruments, along with conch shells, trombones, oboe, English horn, clarinets and percussion will have you putting them back on the shelf again and getting down in a Lotus position. Evolving organically from a partially improvised piece entitled Nautilus which the composer realised in 1989 with Art Baron and N. Scott Robinson, Thousand Year Dreaming is a 43-minute exploration of the virtuosity of the top-notch performers involved. In addition to Lockwood, Baron and Robinson, there's Libby Van Cleve (oboe and English horn, absolutely exquisite), Jon Gibson (didjeridu here), J.D. Parran (clarinets), Peter Zummo (trombone and didjeridu) and percussionists Michael Pugliese and Charles Wood. Quite how the piece was notated (though it is apparently fully scored apart from two improvised sections), or how Lockwood transmitted her ideas to the musicians isn't made clear in the notes, but it hardly matters: the timing is extraordinary, the sense of space masterly. The acoustic beats of the conch shells' microtonal inflections might recall Alvin Lucier, but the work's openness to melody - check out those trombones soaring through the harmonic series on "floating in mid-air"! - takes it out of the domain of Lucier's poetic experimentalism and situates it further to the East. Originally released on What Next back in 1993, and long out of print, its return to circulation is cause for celebration indeed. So maybe I'll reach for that bottle after all. Filling up the CD is floating world, a three-part assemblage of field recordings from all over the world, from the wilds of Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand to the New York Public Library Reading Room, made by Maggi Payne, David Dunn, Larry Austin, Chris Mann, Sorrel Hays, Steve Peters, Ruth Anderson, John Cousins, Philip Dadson, Warren Burt and Brenda Hutchinson and on permanent loan to Lockwood, who has edited them together with consummate skill and terrific attention to detail.
- Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic Magazine
Summer 2007
Thousand Year Dreaming & floating world (Pogus)
While many of her colleagues have started composing tracks and albums, Annea Lockwood still thinks in works and concepts. Even though her CD-output is sizeable, most of it has remained a transfer from the physical world to an abstract medium. This has not been without merit, as Lockwood eagerly points out herself in reference to "floating world". 'Each of these recordings captures a truly transitory series of moments (...) fixing them digitally, but temporarily. When played they become transitory once more (...) a paradox I like very much." On the disc at hand, two of her pieces face each other with a distance of almost ten years. What else do they tell us about her as a composer?
"Thousand Year Dreaming" dates back to 1990 and consists of five closely connected movements for a large group of performers within an extremely specific timbral range. More than anything, it is a work about resonance and sonorities rooted in improvisation: After a live performance with percussionist N. Scott Robinson and Art Baron, a lively discussion ensued about the creative success of their concert and the possibility of combining several didjeridus with the sounds of trumpets, trombones, oboes, clarinets, a frame drum and several other percussive instruments.
This simple idea is the basis for "Thousand Year Dreaming", which furthermore draws inspiration from cave paintings, as well as Asian traditions and their focus on the tone as a self-sustained entity and as a cosmos which needs to be observed on its own. The resulting score uses poignant semitone motives, clustered harmonies and drones as its guiding lights, while sudden moments of constant grooves, vulnerable interactions between smaller groups within the ensemble and more concrete themes provide hooks and anchors for the meditatively engaged ear. Even though the piece was written with all the performers in mind, the didjeridu (whose sound Lockwood describes as "the earth's core pulsing serenely") remains the key, thanks to its pervasive presence and eclectic functionalities such as providing a space for the other instruments, separating different scenes and sending rhythmic impulses. The "performance aspect" which Annea Lockwood fostered in many of her older works, is reduced to a single moment, when the players mingle with the crowd, sonically massaging their shoulders or feet. It is not the only passage which cements this as a serious and stimulatingly diverse work in earth shades.
The difference with "floating world" (1999) is remarkable. A piece based on field recordings of other artists, it is equally intense, yet obviously placed in a very different tradition. The sounds of a beach, oak tree branches, wind, the New York Public Library and a sonogram of Ruth Anderson's jugular (among others) are combined for new aural images. Lockwood has edited the source material and added a sound here and there, but overall, she is less interested in what she can do to these recordings, but what associations they carry in their pure, unprocessed state. Her perceptive power in this regard is stunning; as diverse as her material may be, these collages do not sound mixed-up at all, but rather smooth, inviting and fluent in a very soothing way. Of course, she profits from the incredible clarity and depth of her collaborators' contributions, but the credit for pasting them together into this coherent composition is all hers. Juxtaposed in this fashion, these two pieces portray Annea Loockwood as an artist not simply obsessed with sound, but its every-day implications. The spirituality of "Thousand Year Dreaming" and the personal depictions of "floating world" are just as much an invitation to different layers, as well as an immediate enrichment of our physical lives. The duality of fixed and evaporate elements remains true here as well and makes for a great collection, which works separated into individual tracks and in the context of an entire album.
- Tobias Fischer, www.tokafi.com
August 22, 2007
Ear-Walking Woman (Innovera Studios DVD)
First, take your grand piano, collect a variiety of items including screws, balls and coins; insert carefully into its inner workings. Play, listen. Ever since John Cage began preparing pianos - thereby, as Lois Svard says in her introduction to this fascinating DVD, expanding the instrument's usual sound palette - the potential for a kind of meta-usage has been huge for all artistic endeavors. In conventional terminologies, the New Zealand-born composer Annea Lockwood and pianist Svard might both be thought of as musicians, although, as Ear-Walking Woman, a work for prepared piano, makes clear, the implications of their work have resonances in wider definitions of performance.
Ear-Walking Woman was commissioned by Svard from Lockwood in 1995. Both musicians share a history spent in the avant garde. Lockwood travelled to her current home in the US via studies in London and Darmstadt in the 60s; Svard is an American experimentalist whose long list of associates includes Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Elodie Lauten. At under 20 minutes, Ear-Walking Woman itself is not a long work but it's one full of the subtleties of timbre, tone and rhythm and a piece whose rationale is an acute attention to detail. (Not for nothing does the title describe one who, in Lockwood's phrase, "walks with her ears", that is, attending to all the sonic minutiae as she moves through the world.) It was premiered the following year and recorded in 2001. This DVD features that audio track as well as a visual recording, illustrated conversations between the artists and, most tantalisingly of all, an entire practical section on how to prepare your piano.
These two women, both of mild appearance, are impassioned musicians. They speak about movement, initiating sounds, as well as more drastic methods. Someone flicking through the DVD could chance upon some surreal moments. "You have quite a history of unusual piano pieces," asks Svard of Lockwood in an interview. "What prompted you to burn a piano?"
This is a reference to Piano Transplants from 1968, in which Lockwood incinerated a miked-up upright in London, but the composer could also have asked for Piano Garden (two uprights and one grand half buried in an Essex garden - what must commuters, passing the pianos on their morning trains to London, have thought?) or Drowned Piano (concert grand anchored on seashore just below the tide line) to be taken into consideration. The unifying interest in all these works was partly ritualistic, partly an interest in the gradual process of the disappearance of sound. (In fact, that process had begun long before Lockwood came on the scene: they were all defunct pianos, past repair.) In the event, Drowned Piano was never commissioned, but Lockwood got a surprise when she saw the opening sequence to Jane Campion's film, The Piano: there, bobbing up and down, was the image she'd visualised all those years before.
- Louise Gray, The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music
Issue 266, April 2006
Southern Exposure & Piano Burning
Totally Huge New Music Festival, Perth, Sept 30 - Oct 16, 2005
Annea Lockwood (NZ/UK), renowned for her "piano transplants," was also a special guest of the Convergence providing a very public face for the festival by installing a baby grand on Bathers Beach in Fremantle. The piano in fact went missing, only to be found a few days later at a local backpackers where they were trying to repair it! Lockwood also provided the highlight of the festival, recreating her Burning Piano performance. Despite the chattering crowd gathered in a paddock ready for a bonfire it was a beautiful meditative event, as the tongues of flame burning rainbow colours penetrated the instrument, skittering across the keys faster than fingers have ever managed, eating away at the backboard so that we could see through the body, until the unavoidable total collapse. A worthwhile sacrifice for art.
- Gail Priest, RealTime
Issue #70 Dec-Jan 2005 pg. 15
© Gail Priest; for permission to link or reproduce apply to realtime@realtimearts.net