Guest
Piano burning is precisely what it claims to be: a defunct upright piano is publicly set ablaze. Situating it as a musical composition, however, emphasizes the constructive aspects of this otherwise perplexing exercise. One's attention is drawn to the sounds of the piano as it is transformed by flame, an especially beautiful concept given the otherwise unplayable condition of the instrument. It is given a voice and an audience one final time, saving it from a future of obscurity and decay. Born in New Zealand in 1939, Annea Lockwood moved to England in 1961, studying composition at the Royal College of Music, London and completed her studies in Cologne and Holland, taking courses in electronic music with Gottfried Michael Koenig. During the 1960s she collaborated with sound poets, choreographers and visual artists, and also created a number of works which initiated her lifelong fascination with timbre and new sound sources. In 1969, Lockwood began a series of Piano Transplants (1969-82) in which defunct pianos were burned, drowned, beached, and planted in English gardens. In the decades to follow, she turned her attention to performance works focused on environmental sounds and life-narratives, often using low-tech devices. Since the early 1990s, she has written for a number of ensembles and solo performers, often incorporating electronics and visual elements. She has been commissioned by Bang on a Can, Thomas Buckner and the SEM Ensemble, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company, among many others and much of her music has been recorded on labels such as the Lovely, XI, Mutable, Pogus, EM Records, Rattle Records, Soundz Fine (NZ), Harmonia Mundi and Ambitus. Lockwood is also a recipient of the 2007 Henry Cowell Award. Wounded Galaxies: 1968 – Beneath the Paving Stones, the Beach is a festival and symposium produced by The Burroughs Century Ltd., welcoming scholars, writers, artists, archivists, filmmakers, performers, and others interested in exploring the intellectual and aesthetic legacy of 1968, during its 50th Anniversary year. Programs focus on the events that occurred in Paris, Chicago, and Prague of ’68 and examine their relationship to, and resonance with current struggles in the US and around the world. The festival subtitle is a translation of the French slogan “Sous les pavés, la plage!,” a popular resistance graffiti in France Mai ’68 that refers to both the sand beneath cobblestones lifted by students to hurl at police as well as the ‘Situationist’ conviction that the streets–the expression of capital and consumption–could be rediscovered by abandoning a regimented life.
