New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood (b. 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.

In recent years Lockwood and her music have received widespread attention, including a Columbia University Miller Theatre Composer Portrait concert, a feature article in The New York Times, a SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award, a documentary film by director Sam Green, and most recently, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her recent collaborative works Into the Vanishing Point with the ensemble Yarn/Wire and Becoming Air with avant-garde trumpeter Nate Wooley were released on Black Truffle Records to great acclaim. 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.

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 music is recorded on the Lovely, XI, Mutable, Pogus, EM Records (Japan), Rattle Records, Recital, Harmonia Mundi, CRI, Superior Viaduct, Black Truffle, New World, Gruenrekorder, and Moving Furniture Records. Hearing Studies, co-authored with Ruth Anderson, was published by Open Space in 2021.

Yarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative, experimental new music. The ensemble is admired globally for the energy and care it brings to performances of today’s most adventurous music, and New York Classical Review states that “Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the classical scene today.”

Founded in 2005, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and their creative potential. Yarn/Wire has performed internationally at festivals including the Lincoln Center, Edinburgh International, Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Ultima (Norway), Festival 20/21 (Belgium), Contemplus (Prague), and Wien Modern (Austria) Festivals, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall, Dublin SoundLab, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York’s Miller Theatre. Their numerous commissions include works from composers such as Annea Lockwood, Enno Poppe, Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Ann Cleare, Catherine Lamb, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Alex Mincek, Thomas Meadowcroft, Misato Mochizuki, Sam Pluta, Tyondai Braxton, Kate Soper, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich, Ben Vida, Mark Fell, Sufjan Stevens, and Pete Swanson.

Through the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival, plus other educational residencies and outreach programs, the quartet works to promote not only the present but also the future of new music in the United States. Their ongoing commissioning series, Yarn/Wire/Currents, serves as an incubator for new experimental music. Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO, Kairos, New Amsterdam, Northern Spy, Shelter Press, Distributed Objects, Black Truffle, Populist, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint. For more information, please visit www.yarnwire.org.