Big Ears Festival
Knoxville, TN
March 30 - April 2
MARCH 30, 2023
THE MUSIC OF LUCIER, MCINTOSH & MOCHIZUKI
The two-piano, two-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire present a program of three works for this uncommon but magical combination of forces.
Alvin Lucier’s “Oases” was written for Yarn/Wire in 2016, and premiered at Pioneer Works, in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It’s a spacial piece, with the players moving at a distance, away from the stage. “When I came home from Europe in 1962,” Lucier tells Yarn/Wire in an interview, “I was dissatisfied with the music I heard there.” And so began his long arc of slow-to-unfold, resonant work – this case, making use of the snare drum in its most sensitive, least percussive way.
MARCH 31, 2023
THE MUSIC OF ANNEA LOCKWOOD
Performed by Nate Wooley & YARN/WIRE
The world seems to be finally catching up with the ideas and art of the New York-based composer from New Zealand, Annea Lockwood. After initially pursuing the study of European classical music in the 1960s, she gradually tore free of those strictures and followed a highly personal path more in touch with nature, healing, and human connection. As early as 1967 she was exploring radically unconventional sources and techniques, including a fascinating series of works involving the sound of smashing different sorts of glass, immortalized in a television news story in which her delight and glee with the chaotic, sharp-toned sounds she was producing were palpable on her smiling face.