"It's the close focus that draws me into a sound. And then it sort of spreads out and spreads through my body. And I let that happen, and I'm listening in a different way." - Annea Lockwood

The artist and composer Annea Lockwood is not just any musician. She is an artist of sound. She is a composer of art. Her music is performance art, and her art is always, always audio-rich and musical. She sends her microphones into the elements – fire, here, and rivers, in a recent series called Sound Maps, where she captures, among other things, the tonality of the different depths of the water. She loves chanting, tones, drones. She loves what sound does to our body, how we respond to it, how we visualize it. How sound breathes. How we breathe differently around different sounds.

And for me, as an art historian who fell in love with sound, I get it. I think I get it. And this is what today’s conversation is about. Annea joined me to talk about what it means to listen with your body, to experience the silence in all the noise, and the noise in the silence. We talk about the value of musical training versus musical instinct. We talk about how rivers sound different from one another (they really do!). And we explore what an artist from New Zealand who gained prominence in the 1960s burning pianos can teach us about the art of sound, and what she can learn from her 85-year-old self, today.

Episode webpage

Music used:

The Blue Dot Sessions, "Brer Rhetta," “A Common Pause,” "Tanguedo"

Episode sponsors:

Art of Crime

The Seattle Prize

Visual Arts Passage

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