Annea Lockwood: A Sound Map of the Housatonic River
Follow the winding journey of New Zealand-born composer Annea Lockwood from river to sea, mapping the gentle sounds of waterways.
In the 1960s, Lockwood began exploring the connections between river environments and mental well-being by asking friends and colleagues for sound samples of water environments from all over the world.
Twenty years later, she turned her search for the gentlest of sounds to rivers and set out to map the Hudson River from the Adirondack Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean – followed by the Danube two decades later.
Follow Lockwood’s sonic journeys down these rivers, listen to splashes, natural whirlpools and aquatic insects as well as fishermen, river rangers and echoing geese calls.
‘Sound is a transfer of energy,’ the composer told Kate Molleson, author of the book Sound Within Sound, and with these works, Lockwood seeks to transfer the energy of the waterways into the audience, to stir a sense of connection to the natural world.
Molleson says, ‘Since the late 1960s she has been staging mischievous and meticulous situational dramas in sound,’ rewiring the audience’s senses with, as Molleson describes it, ‘her awe, her reverence, her sense of acute attention’.
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Purcell Room
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