Annea Lockwood and Claire Chase: Elwha!

Legendary composer Annea Lockwood has been a pioneer of field-recording and deep listening for decades—a composer of “insatiable curiosity” with “a singular ear for the music of the natural world” (The New York Times) and a special focus on the sounds of rivers. Claire Chase is a composer, MacArthur Fellow, Harvard professor, and “the most important flutist of our time” (The New York Times). In Elwha!, they join forces on the river.  After an astoundingly successful 2011-2014 dam removal project, Washington’s Elwha River has become a model for ecosystem restoration projects throughout the world: “a thrilling example of what can happen when you take dams out of a river and it takes itself back.” Elwha! is scored for seven flutes (bamboo water flutes, glissando flutes, piccolos, alto flutes, bass flutes, C flutes, and contrabass flutes), all performed by the brilliant Chase, and multichannel environmental surround sound made from Lockwood’s field recordings of the Elwha. 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! premiered in late 2025 at The Kitchen and is a part of Chase’s Density 2036, a 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.