The Kitchen Presents the World Premiere of Claire Chase and Annea Lockwood’s Elwha!, December 11 and 12

The Kitchen continues its visionary presentation of Claire Chase: Density 2036: part xii (2025), marking the twelfth year of Chase’s ambitious, twenty-four-year project in which the artist commissions and performs a new work for flute each year leading up to the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking 1936 solo, Density 21.5. This year’s iteration will see Chase perform Elwha!, a new 40-minute electroacoustic work by Annea Lockwood created in collaboration with Chase. The work, which builds on Lockwood’s field recordings of the Elwha River, is scored for seven flutes all played by Claire Chase with support on live sound by Caley Monahon-Ward and lighting and production design by Nicholas Houfek. Claire Chase: Density 2036: part xii (2025) (December 11 and 12, 6pm and 8pm; tickets, sliding scale $10–$30) and is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator.

Flowing for 45 miles through the ancestral and spiritual homelands of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Elwha River once sustained thriving salmon populations and rich biodiversity. For over a century, dams blocked fish passage, devastated the ecosystem, and forced the Klallam people from their lands. Beginning in 2011, a historic dam removal project—one of the largest in National Park Service history— set the river free. Since the final demolition in 2014, the Elwha has roared back to life: vegetation flourishes, salmon have returned in record numbers, and the river has become a global model for resilience, renewal, and rewilding.

Across a vast palette of seven flutes—bamboo water flutes, glissando flutes, piccolos, alto, bass, C, and contrabass flutes—Chase performs in continuous dialogue with the sounds of the river and its ecosystem. The result is a shimmering, fluid conversation between performer and place, where Chase and Lockwood collaborate with the water, wind, and stone.

The Kitchen is proud to be the presenter of this long-term project, reaffirming all that is possible when artists are given the space and resources to put process first and to think wildly across space and time. Last year, the organization presented the world premiere of The Holy Liftoff by legendary composer Terry Riley, performed by Claire Chase and the JACK Quartet at Public Records.

About Claire Chase

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.

About Annea Lockwood

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 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.

About The Kitchen

Founded in 1971 as an artist-driven collective, The Kitchen today reaffirms and expands upon its originating vision as a dynamic cultural institution that centers artists, prioritizes people, and puts process first. Programming in a kunsthalle model that brings together live performances, exhibition making, and public programming under one roof, The Kitchen empowers its audiences and communities to think creatively and radically about what it means to shape a multivalent and sustainable future in art. The Kitchen seeks to cultivate and hold space for wild thought, risky play, and innovative and experimental making, encouraging artists and cultural workers alike to defy boundaries and sending them into the world to remake art history and catalyze creative change.

Among the artists who have presented significant work at The Kitchen are Muhal Richard Abrams, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Robert Ashley, Charles Atlas, Kevin Beasley, Beastie Boys, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Julius Eastman, Philip Glass, Leslie Hewitt, Darius Jones, Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones, Devin Kenny, Simone Leigh, Ralph Lemon, George Lewis, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sarah Michelson, Tere O’Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Sondra Perry, Vernon Reid, Arthur Russell, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Spiegel, Talking Heads, Greg Tate, Cecil Taylor, Urban Bush Women, Danh Vō, Lawrence Weiner, Anicka Yi, and many more.

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Press contact for The Kitchen: Gilberto Rosa-Duran, gilberto@thekitchen.org and Gregory Werbowsky, gregory.werbowsky@purplepr.com and thekitchen@purple.com