About Me:
I am a composer and interdisciplinary collaborator working at the intersection of traditional and experimental music-making. My work ranges from composing for ensembles and media to co-composing and engaging in unconventional interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate flute, dance, and choreography—the three other sides of my practice. I thrive in both structured compositional settings and fluid, exploratory creative processes. I’ve followed historical formulas and built creative environments from scratch, with much in between. The questions that usually come up at this point are “How do you do it all?” “Are you really this, or are you really that"?” “Isn’t it better to focus on one thing?”
I don’t fit into a box—nor do I want to. I could, but choosing just one path has never appealed to me. Sure, I can play Grisey in my ensemble or Sibelius 2 in an orchestra, take a Graham class and teach ballet, do a choreography residency at Banff, and write an hour of music over two months as a Composition Fellow at Tanglewood. But what defines me isn’t just the skills—it’s the intersections between them. I’m a chameleon, shifting between disciplines, thinking and creating fluidly across music, dance, and beyond. That adaptability is my strength. I compose in the way I do because I’m a mover. I choreograph in the way I do because of my deep musical knowledge and training.
I started ballet before kindergarten, flute in elementary school, composing in middle/high school, and choreographing in college. I put in the performative-practice 10,000 hours, but the idea of being just a flutist or just a dancer never sat right—as much as I tried, I couldn’t spend most of the day in a practice room. I couldn’t spend my life anxiously auditioning to then uproot it and be a cog in the orchestra machine. My body wasn’t responding well to around-the-clock ballet, and though I was offered a year-round training program at Joffrey, I felt a pull to find my voice in music. I also didn’t want to be at the mercy of a ballet company ruining my body and shaping me into a singular physical mold. I wanted to incorporate these things into my career in my own way, in a way that felt true to me.
Being trained in both music and dance, music composition is the anchor in my practice connecting my other sides, which are all my compositional tools. I am an active flute performer, but also use my flute to identify and flesh out ideas. My flute is like my paint brush. After training in ballet and eventually leaving it to further pursue music, I revisited dance with a new perspective, one less rigid/towards one mold and more welcoming of the body’s uniqueness and aging. Having danced in both traditional and interdisciplinary companies, I now dance on my own terms, performing in my own works and using it as a way to feel musical elements - contour, dynamics, texture, etc. Movement is how I get inside the music, and feel its innerworkings. Composition and choreography are particularly wed in my mind — I choreograph on myself and others, and those two creative/generative processes are deeply intertwined. I have a multifaceted identity: I sometimes compose in traditional concert music settings, and sometimes engage more co-composed, unconventional collaborations. Sometimes I’m on one side of the collaboration, and other times I’m on multiple sides, or even all sides (i.e. when I compose and choreograph the same piece, or also dance in it, or play flute and dance). There’s also the logistical and financial reality, where some sides of my practice may take precedence at a given time. Dance films are a nexus for me, where I can compose, choreograph, dance and/or play flute in the role of director.
My work lives between mediums.
In a world that loves categories and boxes, I prefer not to fit into one. I can, but I choose not to. Doing one thing has never appealed to me — I am many things. I started ballet before kindergarten, flute in elementary school, composing in middle/high school, and choreographing in college. The ideas of being only a flutist or only a dancer I’ve had the most challenges with: being cooped up in a practice room for most of the day, or just another flutist in an orchestra? Nope. Being in a ballet company molding to a single body type? That didn’t feel quite right either. Re: ability, sure, there’s the fact that I can play Grisey, take a Graham class, do a choreography residency at Banff, and design both graphic and precisely notated scores. But I believe the meeting points between these are what make me unique as a composer and interdisciplinary artist: I am a chameleon, able to think and create in these different realms and adapt per the setting, either in isolation or in dialogue with other mediums.
There are a lot of boxes people - even myself - have tried to mash me into, but I’m not the kind of person who cleanly fits in one category. Being all these things isn’t about the sum of parts equaling a whole, but rather each coloring the other. I compose in the way I do because I’m a mover, and I choreograph in the way I do because I have deep musical knowledge and training.
I have been involved in both traditional settings of only composition and more interdisciplinary settings, where all of them are on the same plane. compositions, dance companies, both traditional and interdisciplinary
I’ve never been the kind of person who could do just one thing. Being a narrow-minded, one-track-mind flutist practicing in a practice room all day never appealed to me. Being only a ballet dancer in a company never appealed to me, changing myself to a single ideal mold. I had guilt around this for many years. But
Some could say this is unfocused or spreading out too thin, but I look at it that each side of myself strengthens and enriches the other, giving me a multilingual, polymathic perspective.
The first question people ask me is “how do you do it all?” It’s not this simple, but I kind of just do, in the Finnish sisu sense. I also don’t usually do it all at once performatively/creatively, but I’m always keeping up the necessary skills.
I can fit in categories
Bloom for Symphonic Brass Ensemble and Percussion (2024)
Suggested excerpts: 1) 4:44 to 8:04 (pg.11, m.120)
Commissioned by Tanglewood Music Center, performed by TMC Brass and Percussion Fellows; world premiere on June 30, 2024 at Seiji Ozawa Hall.
Annie Nikunen, composer
ABRIDGED PROGRAM NOTE:
A piece about life cycles and cycles of bloom, from each individual being to a bed of beings growing as one body. The opposite of a fanfare, a piece that features the waves and lushness of a sea of brass. Extended program note in score.
The Sound of Space Between Us III for orchestra (2023/24)
Suggested excerpts: 1) 8:47 to 13:24 (starts pg.16, letter H), 2) 4:25 to 6:55 (starts pg. 9, m.100)
Commissioned and performed by The Phoenix Symphony; world premiere on April 26, 2024 at Phoenix Symphony Hall.
Annie Nikunen, composer
PROGRAM NOTE:
Reaching is the reverb of movement...one of my favorite gestures to embody in composition and choreography, as well as physicalize through breath in playing flute. Like sounds expand into space over time and live on, reaches extend far beyond the body, elasticizing the moment for everyone in its range...or in its cage.
As a composer, flutist, dancer and choreographer, I’m always exploring how to connect music and dance in a way beyond mere coexistence, where they physically meld – musicians becoming choreographic agents, dancers embodying sonic activity, and this overarching conversation between musicians, dancers, audience. Here, I wanted to explore musicalizing distance, the sound of silent space framed and catalyzed by two people once connected and now separated, through broken partnership or death. I’m interested in how that emotional space - whether physically measurable or boundless, as in any kind of emotional apartness - can be renewed life through sound. I aimed to make the orchestra an ever-moving body, choreographing sounds that embody physical phenomena, gestures and emotions. These could be bodily movement - i.e. the swelling motif, pushing, pulling, embracing, touching and reaching - or psychological movement resurrected from and interlaced with memories, i.e. longing, thinking, dwelling, revisiting.
This piece is the third and final installment of The Sound of Space Between Us trilogy, all based around a 4-chord phrase that is re-contextualized, mutated and expanded. The three installments are all sonically reminiscent of one another, but evolve in instrumentation, structure, narrative and movement. They expand around the solo violin role, or present voice, like someone’s core amidst a changing body, mind and circumstances around them. I wrote the first installment in 2021 for multi-tracked violin, where the violinist’s live playing is surrounded by recorded tracks of their voices from different points in time. I wrote the second installment for violin soloist and string trio (string quartet) in 2023, serving as the thematic focal point for a program of music and dance I curated featuring BlackBox Ensemble - of which I am the flutist - at The Clark Art Institute and Roulette (see third work sample below). This final installment for orchestra consists of various embedded duos representing those two aforementioned people: the solo violin and full orchestra, the solo flute and solo violin, the “poofs” of densely orchestrated textures suddenly cutting to more minimal, sparse textures, etc. So not only are there many layers of dialogue, but there are also many forms these two voices take in communicating with each other.
While there are some similar threads of material in Parts II and III, they develop and take shape in different ways.
The Sound of Space Between Us II for solo violinist and string trio (string quartet) (2023)
Suggested excerpts: 1) 14:56 to end (starts pg. 25, m.297), 2) 12:31 to 14:05 (starts pg.22, m.245)
NY premiere performed by BlackBox Ensemble featuring guest violin soloist Clara Kim as part of BlackBox Festival on January 18, 2024 at Roulette Intermedium. World premiere at The Clark Art Institute on October 1, 2023.
Annie Nikunen, composer / director / dancer / choreographer
Peter Cheng, dancer
Tyler Neidermayer, electronic postlude*
*after the piece ends, Tyler took its live recording and stretched it out to create a swirling soundscape lingering in the air
ABRIDGED PROGRAM NOTE:
This is Part II of The Sound of Space Between Us trilogy. As a composer, flutist, dancer and choreographer, it’s not often that I get to wear all those hats at the same time, so this was a culmination, along with curating a program around it originally set at The Clark Art Institute, where it premiered in October 2023. I wanted to connect sound and movement through The Clark's unique landscape, from its grandioseness to its subtle details. The program is a meeting point between societal and interpersonal; our public place in the ecosystem and our private paths with(in) it. The program also traverses a spectrum of methods of interpreting music and dance, from notated scores to sonic maps to choreographic exercises.
This recording is the second iteration of the program at Roulette in January 2024 as part of BlackBox Festival, where I reconfigured the choreography and overall production on a much smaller scale. Whether somewhere as vast as The Clark or somewhere as intimate as Roulette, amidst me and Peter Cheng dancing together in the space, the violin soloist physically embodies the sound of space between us.
holding onto blur for solo flute and electronics (2022)
Improvised/unscored (below is a description as to how I created it)
Suggested excerpts: 1) 0:00 to 6:05 (Part I), 2) 7:20 to 9:50 (Part II excerpt), 3) 12:40 to 16:45 (Part III excerpt)
Annie Nikunen, composer / flutist / dancer / choreographer / video effects editor
Kevin Chiu, cinematagrapher
PROGRAM NOTE/DESCRIPTION:
As someone typically motivated by concept and narrative in my writing, I wanted to challenge myself to create something based on a more simple and abstract idea. I played a structured improvisation based on ascending scales within a collection of pitches, cycling between climbing and getting knocked down to the bottom again. I used reverb and delay to interact with myself, playing and leaving behind lingering ghostly trails of my flute playing. I have experimented a lot with this overlay technique in both sound and film.
Kevin and I shot this short film off the cuff while on location for The Sound of Space Between Us at The Clark, in an Airbnb in Williamstown, MA. The nature of Kevin’s cinematography in its intimate, out-of-focus lens resonated so much with the blurry soundscape I was envisioning. I’ve always love blurred film and photography that capture those fleeting moments, the in-betweens of actions. Over the course of about 16 minutes of dense flute textures, the film repeats in three parts: first in its original form, second in reverse, and third canonized, overlaying a staggered entrance of the beginning of the film. In the last bit of the third repetition of the film, the flute mass fades into a deafening silence, amplifying the gravity of the gradual movements.