On View: December 11-December 12
The Kitchen at Westbeth (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft)
Time:
Tickets (Sliding scale; $10-30) – Time TBA
The Kitchen will present the newest iteration of virtuoso flutist Claire Chase's Density 2036 initiative, a 24-year commissioning project launched in 2013 to create a new body of flute repertory leading up to the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s landmark 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5.
This 12th year will present the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by the legendary composer Annea Lockwood. Titled Elwha!, this new work for multi-channel environmental sound and solo flute looks to the Elwha River in the Pacific Northwest, the ancestral and spiritual home of the Lower Elwha Klallam people, and of five species of salmon, who were, together, abruptly dispossessed and evicted when two dams were built on the river beginning in 1910 without fish ladders, cutting the salmon off from their habitat, driving the tribe off their land and, through ensuing legislation, making it illegal for them to maintain their fishing rights, and with them the tribe’s core sustenance and vital integral spiritual connection to the river. In 2011–2014, both dams were taken out, and both tribal members and fisheries researchers are saying that the river’s recovery is astounding, much surpassing their projections. Now there is so much hope in the region and beyond. These dam removals have turned out to be models driving similar removal not only here but in other countries, we are discovering. This is a resilient river, and a resilient people, and this work contributes to the voices saying “This can be done. Recovery works.”
Claire Chase: Density 2036, part xii is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator.
BIOS
Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase was the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season, only the second time in that organization’s history that the position has been given to a performing artist.
Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonia, and San Francisco Symphony, where she is a Collaborative Partner with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chase’s discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres.
In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its eleventh year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. Central to the Density initiative is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in new interpretive directions. The Density Fellows program, launched in 2023 in celebration of the tenth anniversary, will provide ten exceptional emerging flutists annually with the resources to intensively study the Density repertoire with Chase and the Density composers. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by The Kitchen and Carnegie Hall.
A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School.
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.
Funding Support and Credits
The Kitchen’s programs are made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, The Kitchen Global Council, Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council, as well as through generous support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and in part by public funds from the Manhattan Borough President, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The Kitchen acknowledges the generous support provided by the Collaborative Arts Network New York(CANNY). As a coalition of small to mid-sized multidisciplinary arts organizations, CANNY is committed to strengthening the infrastructure of arts nonprofits throughout New York.
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