NL premiere

Formed in 2005, Yarn/Wire is a music quartet made up of musicians Laura Barger and Julia Den Boeron on piano, and Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto on percussion. The core drive of Yarn/Wire as a project is to promote creative, experimental new music by composers; they do this through live performances, educational initiatives, and large-scale collaborative projects. Described by TimeOut as “fearless,” “restlessly curious,” and brimming with “spellbinding virtuosity,” Yarn/Wire come to Rewire 2024 to perform the music of Annea Lockwood, specifically Into The Vanishing Point (2019) – made in collaboration with Yarn/Wire – and Ear-Walking Woman (1996). In Ear-Walking Woman, the prepared piano takes centre stage, with every part of its splayed-open interior being intervened upon, massaged, plucked, and played with during the piece. It is filled with minimal, melodic, and dissonant character. With Into The Vanishing Point, prepared piano forms the sonic foundation that allows the other percussive and instrumental elements to build upon it with strident, growing tones – both lush and mysterious. Inspired by the distressing news that many insect populations were collapsing globally, Into the Vanishing Point was mapped out loosely by Lockwood to allow the members of Yarn/Wire to explore their “feelings about what is happening ecologically.” Hope and fear intermingle in these pieces, both of which tie into Lockwood’s lifelong interest in ecology, nature, and their relationships to sound.

*This is a seated concert