Annea Lockwood Beside the Hudson River

Annea Lockwood Beside the Hudson River

Coming to America Annea Lockwood in Conversation with Frank J. Oteri Tuesday, November 11, 2003—1:00-2:30 p.m. in Garrison, NY Videotaped by Randy Nordschow ANNEA LOCKWOOD: I didn’t come over here until ’73. Pauline got me over here. FRANK J. OTERI: Really? ANNEA LOCKWOOD: Yeah! [laughs] One of the many things that I’m grateful to Pauline… Read more »

Written By

Frank J. Oteri

Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.

Coming to America

Annea Lockwood in Conversation with Frank J. Oteri
Tuesday, November 11, 2003—1:00-2:30 p.m. in Garrison, NY
Videotaped by Randy Nordschow

ANNEA LOCKWOOD: I didn’t come over here until ’73. Pauline got me over here.

FRANK J. OTERI: Really?

ANNEA LOCKWOOD: Yeah! [laughs] One of the many things that I’m grateful to Pauline Oliveros for…

FRANK J. OTERI: So how did that happen?

ANNEA LOCKWOOD: Ruth Anderson, my partner, had put in the electronic music studio at Hunter College and was directing it. It was the first one to go into the CUNY system, I think. She was going on sabbatical and called Pauline to see if Pauline would like to take her place for a year in the city. Pauline said that she had a sabbatical too, but she suggested me. I had been dying to get over here. Most of my musical friends were American by that point. I had been meeting a lot of people in London: Charles Amirkhanian, the Sonic Arts Union folks, Alvin Curran, and all sorts of good friends were here, Cage and Tudor and so on. I was dying to get here, so I said yes. I remember it vividly. I was in the bath. [laughs] I got out of the bath one evening, this call came from the States: would you like to like to come to the States? I had been trying to figure out how to get here for at least 3 or 4 years. I wrapped a towel around me and said, “Yes!” [laughs]

FRANK J. OTERI: At this point, 30 years later, do you consider yourself an American composer?

ANNEA LOCKWOOD: I’m often called an American composer. I don’t know. I don’t have a real answer to that. I still somewhere think of myself as a New Zealander. It’s my birthroots and it’s the soundscape and landscape that’s really triggered a lot of my work. Many of the ways that I think about sound come from my experiences in New Zealand as a child. But I live here and it’s the most nourishing environment I’ve been in yet. It’s given a lot to me. America has been very generous to me. So, yes, I’m both. I think I’m both.

FRANK J. OTERI: Certainly a lot of the environments that have triggered your work have been American environments, specifically this particular area we’re in.

ANNEA LOCKWOOD: Yeah.

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