KPFA-FM Music Dept. ➔ An Interview With Annea Lockwood, April 4, 1972

Analog Audio

Event Type

Interview and Music

Origin

KPFA

Identifier

AM.1972.04.04

Program Length

24 min

Dates

| broadcast
| 1972-04-04 | created

Description

Charles Amirkhanian interviews composer Annea Lockwood at her house in Ingatestone, England, on April 4, 1972. Born in in New Zealand in 1939 and a former student of Gottfried Michael Koenig, Lockwood is well known as the creator of a series of environmental ambient works including a series or trance and ritual drumming programs featuring anthropological recordings from the BBC and a collection of river recordings from around the world. This interview begins with a discussion of Lockwood’s “Glass Concert,” for amplified pieces of resonant glass, which Annea describes as her first “really free work,” and which derived from a dissatisfaction with the electronic sounds she had been experimenting with and the idea that if she took a non-electronic sound and really listened to it , that it would reveal a fullness and inner complexity that she had been unable to produced mechanically. Lockwood also admits that despite having studied and played piano since she was five years old, she has a serious dislike of piano music, before taking Amirkhanian for a walk through her “piano garden” in which a selection of pianos were deposited in her back yard and allowed to slowly decay until they would, jokes Lockwood, play John Cage’s music very well. The conversation continues with Lockwood describing her work for tape, “Tiger Balm,” as a deeply erotic piece which also incorporates elements of hypnotic trance music, and in which some audience members have identified “bits of magic stuff.” Also touched upon in this endearing interview are her collaborations with Hugh Davies, John LIfton, Harvey Matusow and others in the group Naked Software, as well as an ongoing, real-life, performance art piece in which she and her partner Harvey Matusow have been married at least 10 times, in a variety of locations, including an attempt at Stonehenge on Halloween. Lockwood comes across in this interview as a delightfully cheerful composer deeply interested in producing trance inducing music that is firmly embedded in the natural world.

Genres

Electro-Acoustic / Electronic
New music

Subjects

New music
Electro-acoustic
Electronic music
Nature sounds
Aleatory music
Ambient music

Related place

Ingatestone (England) (was recorded at)

Related Entities

Amirkhanian, Charles
Lockwood, Annea, 1939-