Beautifully produced—in every sense of the term—this LP offers listeners significant performances of Annea Lockwood’s most recent compositions. The richness of these two instrumental works—Becoming Air, a commission for trumpeter Nate Wooley, and Into the Vanishing Point, an ensemble piece for Yarn/Wire’s two pianists and two percussionists—underscores the continuing vitality that characterises Lockwood’s work. There is an element of, if not co-composition, then certainly virtuoso interpretation; in both works, extended playing techniques broaden reach and meaning with new sounds. This transformational process is a thread through all Lockwood’s music: from the Piano Transplants of the late ’60s, to her river sound archives (1989–2012), to the geophysical pulses that make Wild Energy (2014, with Bob Bielecki) thrum. We hear it, too, in For Ruth (2021), the most intimate of compositions, created by Lockwood after the death of her partner, the composer and studio pioneer Ruth Anderson.
However, this latest recording alludes to more urgent transformations. Lockwood and Wooley aim at what they call a “magical” disorderliness on Becoming Air. The transformation here is in the way Wooley’s airstream is translated into sound, modified at points with gentle electronic processing. Sonic vitality is expressed in delicious weightlessness, but a percussive sound near the end warns of the end of breath. Vanishing Point is even clearer in its alarum. Sparked by scientific reports of ecological change, specifically the global reduction in insect populations, Lockwood and the Yarn/Wire quartet have worked to build a termite mound of sound: noises scurry through pianos and across percussive surfaces, creating multiplicities of resonance. They are reminders of the interdependence that life—creative and otherwise—depends on.