Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM VIEW THIS EMAIL IN YOUR BROWSER FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS CONTACTS October 15, 2019 Aleba Gartner, 212/206-1450 Tickets & Information: 212/854-7799 [email protected] millertheatre.com Lauren Bailey Cognetti, 212/854-1633 [email protected] "Miller’s utterly indispensable Composer Portraits series reaches its 20th season this year, two decades in which these concerts have made or cemented the reputations of dozens of composers.“ — The New York Times 9/20/19 Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues its 20th season of Composer Portraits with Annea Lockwood featuring Estelí Gomez, voice Nate Wooley, trumpet Yarn/Wire https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-annea-lockwood-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 1 of 10 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM Program includes a world premiere co-commissioned by New York State Council on the Arts and Miller Theatre Thursday, November 14, 2019, 8:00 P.M. Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street) Tickets: starting at $20; Students with valid ID: starting at $7 https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-annea-lockwood-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 2 of 10 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM Photo by Kyle Dorosz for Miller Theatre. From Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey: “One of my programming goals for Composer Portraits is to show the breadth of creative practice used by composers today. Annea Lockwood is an important composer and sound artist with a decades-long career whose compositional style https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-annea-lockwood-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 3 of 10 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM embraces timbre and natural sound sources, in a unique and captivating way. She challenges audiences to think differently about their environment and its relationship to her music. I’m thrilled to commission a new work from her for this Portrait, and to share her evocative music with a wider audience.” Composer Portraits Thursday, November 14, 2019, 8:00 P.M. Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street) Annea Lockwood (b. 1939) LISTEN A tiger’s purr, burning pianos, helium balloons, and the Hudson River have all played a part in the music of Annea Lockwood. The intense focus on deep listening of sonic details from nature and electronics has formed the basis of the eclectic output of the New Zealand- born composer and sound artist. The adventurous piano and percussion quartet Yarn/Wire returns to perform a world premiere commission, alongside three other works, including the technically demanding Becoming Air, written for and performed by trumpeter Nate Wooley. PROGRAM: Into the Vanishing Point (2019) world premiere, co-commissioned by New York State Council on the Arts and Miller Theatre Becoming Air (2018) Ear-Walking Woman (1996) I Give You Back (1995) ARTISTS: Estelí Gomez, voice Nate Wooley, trumpet Yarn/Wire Q&A about this Portrait with Melissa Smey and Lara Pellegrinelli: "Pushing Boundaries with Annea Lockwood" https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-annea-lockwood-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 4 of 10 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM Composer Portraits at 20 With this new season, Miller Theatre proudly celebrates the 20th season of its influential Composer Portraits series, called "indispensable" earlier this year by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. For twenty years, Miller Theatre’s flagship series has fostered the creation of new work, served as an incubator for emerging artists and a champion of those not yet well known, and created a community of adventurous listeners. Upcoming Portraits BRIGHT SHENG: The Columbia alum & MacArthur Fellow performs as pianist and conductor leading Curtis 20/21 in a concert of his works (12/5) CAROLINE SHAW: Attacca Quartet and Sō Percussion perform the Pulitzer-winning star composer's chamber music from the last decade (2/6) OSCAR BETTISON: Alarm Will Sound returns to Miller to perform two of the British- American composer's recent chamber concertos (2/20) DAI FUJIKURA: Champions of Fujikura's music, ICE performs a high-octane program, including a world premiere Miller commission (3/5) Annea Lockwood annealockwood.com Annea Lockwood (b. 1939) was born in New Zealand and moved to London in 1961 to study composition at the Royal College of Music. In 1973, she moved to New York to teach at Hunter College. She is currently a Professor Emerita at Vassar College. During the 1960s, she collaborated with sound poets, choreographers, and visual artists, and also created a number of works including the Glass Concerts which initiated her lifelong fascination with 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. In the 1970s and ‘80s, Lockwood turned her attention to performance works focusing on https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-annea-lockwood-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 5 of 10 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM environmental sounds and life-narratives, which were widely presented in the U.S., Europe, and in New Zealand. Since the early ‘90s, she has written for a number of ensembles and solo performers, often incorporating electronics and visual elements. Thousand Year Dreaming is scored for four didgeridus, conch shell trumpets, and other instruments and incorporates slides of the cave paintings at Lascaux. Duende, a collaboration with baritone Thomas Buckner, carries the singer into a heightened state, similar to a shamanic journey, through the medium of his own voice. Ceci n’est pas un piano for piano, video, and electronics merges images from the Piano Transplants with Jennifer Hymer’s musings on her hands and pianos she has owned. Recent work includes Vortex commissioned by Bang on a Can for the All-Stars; a surround- sound installation, A Sound Map of the Danube; Luminescence, settings of texts by Etel Adnan for Thomas Buckner and the SEM Ensemble; Gone! in which a little piano-shaped music box, attached to 20 helium balloons, is released from a concert grand and floats off over the audience playing, in one case, Memories. Jitterbug, commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for the dance “eyeSpace,” incorporates Lockwood’s recordings of aquatic insects, and two improvising musicians working from photographs of rock surfaces. Poems by three of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are the focus of In Our Name, a collaboration with Thomas Buckner for baritone voice, cello, and ‘tape’. Much of her music has been recorded, on the Lovely, XI, Mutable, Pogus, EM Records (Japan), Rattle Records, Soundz Fine (NZ), Harmonia Mundi, and Ambitus labels. She is a recipient of the 2007 Henry Cowell Award. Estelí Gomez roomfulofteeth.org/esteli-gomez Soprano Estelí Gomez is quickly gaining recognition as a stylish interpreter of early and contemporary repertoires. Praised for her "clear, bright voice" (The New York Times), recent highlights include her solo debut with the Seattle Symphony in Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3; the world premiere of a song cycle by Andrew McIntosh with Yarn/Wire; solos in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass with Bach Collegium San Diego; performances of Craig Hella Johnson’s new oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard; and tours with contemporary octet Roomful of Teeth across North America and Europe. Estelí can be heard on the Juno-nominated recording Salsa Baroque with Montréal-based Ensemble Caprice, as well as Roomful of Teeth's self-titled debut album. In January 2014, she was awarded a Grammy with Roomful of Teeth, for best chamber music/small ensemble performance; in November 2011 she received first prize in the International https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-annea-lockwood-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 6 of 10 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of ANNEA LOCKWOOD, 11/14 10/16/19, 245 PM Early Music Vocal Competition “Canticum Gaudium.” Estelí received her B.A. with honors in music from Yale College, and M.M. from McGill University. Nate Wooley natewooley.com Nate Wooley (b. 1974) was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Wooley moved to New York in 2001 and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, in addition to collaborating with Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson. He is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums. Yarn/Wire yarnwire.org Yarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet. Noted for its “spellbinding virtuosity” (Time Out New York) and “mesmerizing” performances (The New York Times) the ensemble is admired for the energy and precision it brings to performances of today’s most adventurous music.