Annea Lockwood: Piano Transplants - Piano Burning, Piano Garden & Piano Drowning

Beginning Wednesday, October 13th, 12pm ET and streaming throughout the day, ISSUE presents a free online program of renowned composer Annea Lockwood’s iconic Piano Transplants works: Piano Burning (1968), Piano Garden (1969-70), and Piano Drowning (1972). This streamed event features expansive documentation from three presented iterations of each piece taking place in partnership with: Brisbane Festival 2021 and Room40 in Australia (Piano Burning); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY (Piano Garden); and Soundlands in Plas Bodfa, Wales (Piano Drowning).

ISSUE’s online presentation of Piano Transplants runs in tandem with our 2021 Benefit event,, which honors Annea Lockwood, taking place in-person at Yamaha Artist Services, New York on October 13th at 7:30pm.

Annea Lockwood’s explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sounds and environments have been shaped by a lifelong fascination with timbre and new sound sources. In works ranging from sound art and environmental sound installations to concert music, Lockwood’s work demonstrates the deep complexity that can be revealed within seemingly simple sounds. Her Piano Transplants (1968-72) are compositions in which pianos beyond repair were burned, drowned, and planted in an English garden. These iconic works became a testament to Lockwood’s focus on elemental and natural sound sources and interdisciplinary interventions, where the piano becomes played by its environmental and contextual circumstance. The presentations are celebrations of the reconfiguration of material, the transformation of objects, and the resulting multi-sensory performance that ensues.

Curated by Lawrence English, Piano Burning was recently presented at the Brisbane Festival 2021 and features a performance from composer and artist Vanessa Tomlinson. In 1968, Lockwood originally set fire to an irreparable, upright piano on the banks of the River Thames in London. It was the first of her Piano Transplants, reconfiguring people’s relationship to one of the most iconic western instruments of our age.

Piano Garden was installed by ISSUE in partnership with Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts on their grounds in Katonah, NY. The presentation features clarinetist Madison Greenstone with sound artist Stephan Moore. The piano has been planted amongst fast growing creepers and bushes, and photographed regularly by Gabe Palacio. Originally composed in 1969-70, the piece instructs the performer to “not protect against weather,” and to “leave the piano(s) there forever.”

Piano Drowning was installed by Soundlands in partnership with ISSUE at Plas Bodfa, Wales. The presentation features a specially commissioned piece composed by Ynyr Pritchard who performs on the partially submerged piano with Xenia Pestova Bennett. The new work will be performed on the piano at Plas Bodfa every year in appreciation of Annea Lockwood and as a catalyst for new artistic activity.

Annea Lockwood’s compositions range from sound art and environmental sound installations to concert music. Recent works include Becoming Air for trumpet, co-composed with performer, composer, and 2011 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Nate Wooley that premiered at ISSUE in 2018, as well as Into the Vanishing Point, co-composed with renowned quartet and 2012 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Yarn/Wire, that serves as a meditation on the large-scale disappearance of insect populations. Both pieces will be released on Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label in September, 2021. Annea's work has also focused on our relationship with the non-human environment and recognizes how interdependent we are with the phenomenal world. That gave rise to the three different river Sound Maps installations, of the Hudson (1982), Danube (2005), Housatonic (2009), and her collaboration with Bob Bielecki, Wild Energy (2014), a site-specific installation focused on geophysical, atmospheric, and mammalian infra- and ultra- sound sources, permanently installed at the Caramoor Center for Music and Arts in Katonah, New York. Her music has been issued on CD, vinyl and online on the Gruenrekorder, Black Truffle, Superior Viaduct, Lovely Music, New World, Ambitus, 3Leaves, XI, EM and other labels. She is a recipient of the SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) Lifetime Award 2020. Annea Lockwood has a deep history with ISSUE Project Room, is a member of the organization's Artistic Advisory Council and is the honoree of ISSUE's 2021 Benefit.

Vanessa Tomlinson’s bold artistic vision places soundmaking at its centre. She explores the embodied knowledge of making and performing through place-led compositions, using mostly acoustic instruments, to create new connections, memories, and potentials with a broad community of listeners. Recent work includes The Boundary Riders and The Oxbow as part of Easter at the Piano Mill; Beacons, a trio for acoustic instruments, electronics and ocean co-composed by Lawrence English; The Space Inside solo for tamtam on Room40 label; and The Listening Museum exploring sonic possibilities in the working factory of UAP. Vanessa has been artist-in-residence at The Smithsonian Institute, Civatelli Ranieri, Bundanon National Trust, Harrigans Lane Collective and Asialink (China) and published two books Here and Now: Artistic Research in Australia (Intelligent Arts) and The Piano Mill (URO Publications). Vanessa is currently Director of Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University

Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist currently based between New York City and San Diego. She has performed as a featured artist of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Notable performances have been as a soloist presented by ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial Night of 100 Solos in Los Angeles, in recital at the Vigeland Mausoleum (Oslo) and at the Fondation Abbaye Royaumont. Madison is the clarinetist of TAK Ensemble, and a founding member of the [Switch~ Ensemble]. She can be heard on Wandelweiser Editions, Another Timbre, and on the TAK Editions Podcast. Madison develops collaborative works that explore brend-based awareness in Hermetic Art Party with Anthony Vine (guitar and objects) and Katy Gilmore (projections). She works closely on creative projects and large-scale low-clarinets works with Michelle Lou. Further ongoing collaborations are with Timothy McCormack, John McCowen, members of the Harvard Group for New Music, and DAD (T.J. Borden and Michael Matsuno). Madison is a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, where she learns greatly from the mentorship of Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. Madison performed at ISSUE Project Room in December 2018 in support of, and alongside, Mary Margaret O'Hara as well as Artist-In-Residence John McCowen in 2020.

Stephan Moore is a sound artist, designer, composer, improviser, coder, teacher, and curator based in Chicago. His creative work manifests as electronic studio compositions, improvisational outbursts, sound installations, scores for collaborative performances, algorithmic compositions, interactive art, and sound designs for unusual circumstances. He is the curator of sound art for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, organizing annual exhibitions since 2014. He is also the president of Isobel Audio LLC, which builds and sells his Hemisphere loudspeakers. He was the music coordinator and touring sound engineer of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (2004-10), and has worked with Pauline Oliveros, Anthony McCall, and Animal Collective, among many others. He is a senior lecturer in the Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University.

Xenia Pestova Bennett is an innovative performer and educator. Described as “a powerhouse of contemporary keyboard repertoire” (Tempo), “stunning” (Wales Arts Review), “ravishing” (Pizzicato) and “remarkably sensuous” (New Zealand Herald) in the international press, she has earned a reputation as a leading interpreter of uncompromising repertoire alongside masterpieces from the past. Xenia’s commitment to promoting music by living composers inspired her to commission dozens of new works and collaborate with major innovators in contemporary music. Her widely acclaimed recordings of core piano duo works of the Twentieth Century by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen with Pascal Meyer are available on four CDs for Naxos Records. Her evocative solo debut of premiere recordings for the Innova label titled “Shadow Piano” was described as a “terrific album of dark, probing music” by the Chicago Reader. Xenia's own compositions are available on Diatribe Records and TakuRoku. Her full-length album "Atomic Legacies" features Ligeti Quartet and the Magnetic Resonator Piano. Highlighted in Bandcamp's "Best of Contemporary Classical" in 2020, the album was described as "boldly conceived and brilliantly realised... a foretaste of things to come" in The Wire (Julian Cowley), "intoxicating, extraordinarily eerie and evocative” (Bernard Clarke, RTE LyricFM), "melancholy... heart-swells and proper feelings” (Jennifer Lucy Allan, The Quietus) and "a nuclear musical reaction that produces that great, irradiated beauty" (Tom Service, BBC Radio 3). Xenia's subsequent digital EP "Atonal Electronic Chamber Music for Cats" takes an unexpected turn-around, using vintage synthesizers in an exploration of 1990's techno-art-pop nostalgia. Xenia was Head of Performance at Bangor University from 2011 - 2015. Since 2015, she lectures in music at the University of Nottingham. She also provides coaching to individuals and organisations on anxiety management using movement, breathwork and focus interventions. Xenia's previous collaboration with Soundlands includes a realisation of Annea Lockwood’s “Piano Burning” in the presence of the composer in 2013.

Ynyr Pritchard is a Welsh-Maltese 19 year old musician and composer. Member of the North Wales Youth Orchestra (2014-2017) and the National Youth Orchestra of Wales (2015) as well as being a current member of the North Wales Camerata. Ynyr was also a member of the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain (2010-2015) and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (2016-2020). Has made numerous appearances at the BBC Proms with NYOGB and also the BBC Symphony Orchestra as a member of the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble. In 2019 he was one of the 68 solo string players in the premiere of Jonny Greenwood’s Horror Vacui, playing alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Ynyr studied viola first through the Canolfan Gerdd William Mathias with Margaret Scourse until 2016 where he continued his studies at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester for four years with Lucy Nolan. In 2015 he took private composition classes with Jeffrey Lewis in Llanfairfechan before also continuing his lessons in composition at the JRNCM with Matthew Sergeant, Larry Goves, Mark Dyer and Joshua Brown. He has recently completed his first year at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague studying both viola and composition with Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir and Calliope Tsoupaki respectively. Through the Canolfan he has also taken masterclasses with Ensemble Cymru and has recently begun volunteering with the Canolfan’s Doniau Cudd programme, improvising with an ensemble of musicians with learning disabilities, after taking work experience there. He has appeared numerous times in the Urdd Eisteddfod and the National Eisteddfod as well as recitals in the Beaumaris Festival and the Rhyl Music Festival, where he won the Muriel Lewis award for most promising young musician.