Between their home in Crompond, New York and the house they built together in Flathead Lake, Montana, the electronic composer Ruth Anderson and the sound artist Annea Lockwood sustained a 50-year romantic and creative partnership. Although Anderson passed away in 2019, the artists’ dialogue continues with Tête-à-tête, a collection of previously unreleased archival and new sound works, published in 2023 by Ergot Records.

This website, made in collaboration with Lockwood, is a companion to Tête-à-tête. The album is covered in snapshots taken throughout the decades Anderson and Lockwood spent together. On May 15, 2023 Lockwood revisited these photos in her living room, speaking the memories and associations they brought with them: a photo of Anderson at Flathead Lake stirs the beloved sound of faraway cars passing on the freeway, photos of her music studio conjure her canny understanding of tools old and new, and a photo with Pauline Oliveros contains the story of the pair’s early courtship. Lockwood, long interested in the sound of the remembering voice, wrote about the cadence of memory in the score to her 1974 sound work “Spirit Catchers”:

“Remembering has an ebb and flow to it, a shifting momentum. . . . Words come slowly, spaced out, until an image has crystalized, when the voice changes, is charged with energy, and the pace of the talking increases and the density of imagery with it.”