Elwha! for seven flutes and seven-channel environmental sound
Density 2036: part xii (2025)
The 12th year of the Density 2036 project will feature the world premiere of Elwha!, a new 40-minute electroacoustic work by the legendary composer Annea Lockwood (b. 1939, New Zealand) created in collaboration with Claire Chase. The work is scored for seven flutes, all played by Chase, and multichannel environmental surround sound made from Lockwood’s field recordings of the Elwha River.
The Elwha, a spectacularly beautiful 45-mile river on the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington, runs through the ancestral and spiritual home of the Lower Elwha Klallam people. It is one of several rivers in the Pacific Northwest that hosts all five species of native Pacific salmon and four anadromous trout species. From 1911 to 2014, dams blocked fish passage on the Lower Elwha and decimated the river’s thriving ecosystem, unlawfully driving the tribe off their own land. Local and international advocacy in support of the river and the Klallam people resulted in one of the largest dam removal projects in National Parks history beginning in 2011. After the complete removal of the dams in 2014, the Elwha has come back to life. Revegetation efforts have flourished, and the fish population has returned in record numbers, making the Elwha a model for ecosystem restoration projects—and for resilience, renewal, and rewilding—throughout the world.
Drawing inspiration from movements advocating for personhood and legal rights of rivers, Lockwood and Chase approach the Elwha as an equal creative collaborator in the composition of the work. Bamboo water flutes, glissando flutes, piccolos, alto flutes, bass flutes, C flutes, and contrabass flutes merge with an immersive seven-channel mix of the river’s sounds diffused throughout the performance space. Chase’s seven flutes respond to the multilayered and kaleidoscopic pitch, rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic material of the Elwha and its many living inhabitants, alternately conversing with, rising above, and being submerged by the wild musics of this iconic, liberated river.
Elwha! is the 12th cycle of Density 2036, Claire Chase’s 24-year project to develop a new flute repertory leading up to the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s iconic flute solo “Density 21.5” in 2036. The Kitchen has been the presenter of all twelve Density projects to date.
Images of Annea Lockwood and Claire Chase from a recent workshop of Elwha! at Tippet Rise Art Center, Montana.
Photos by Brian Langeliers for Tippet Rise Art Center
Annea Lockwood
Aotearoa New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood (b. 1939) brings vibrant energy, ceaseless curiosity, and a profound sense of openness to her music. Lockwood’s lifelong fascination with the visceral effects of sound in our environments and through our bodies—the way sounds unfold and their myriad “life spans”—serves as the focal point for works ranging from concert music to performance art to multimedia installations.
In recent years Lockwood and her music have received widespread attention, including a Columbia University Miller Theatre Composer Portrait concert, a feature article in The New York Times, a SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award, a documentary film by director Sam Green, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2024 Fromm Foundation Commission. Her recent collaborative works Into the Vanishing Point with the ensemble Yarn/Wire and Becoming Air with avant-garde trumpeter Nate Wooley were released on Black Truffle Records to great acclaim. Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals such as Lucerne Festival, Tectonics Athens Festival, Signale Graz, Counterflows International Festival of Music and Art, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and many others.
Lockwood has received commissions from numerous ensembles and solo performers, including Bang On A Can, baritone Thomas Buckner, pianists Sarah Cahill, Lois Svard, and Jennifer Hymer, the Holon Scratch Orchestra, Essential Music, Yarn/Wire, and Issue Project Room.
Her music is recorded on the Lovely, XI, Mutable, Pogus, EM Records (Japan), Rattle Records, Recital, Harmonia Mundi, CRI, Superior Viaduct, Black Truffle, New World, Gruenrekorder, and Moving Furniture Records. Hearing Studies, co-authored with Ruth Anderson, was published by Open Space in 2021.
