Anna Webber2024

In Anna's Words...

Composer Anna Webber, a virtuosic flutist and saxophonist, situates herself in the avant-garde jazz world at the same time that her explorations of multiple musical languages bring together – and creatively expand - what have often been disparate worlds. Challenging herself to go beyond the binaries of improvisation and notated composition, she’s translating her improvisational vocabulary into a codified, notated language. Her interests in timbre and sound as organizing forces – as important to her as harmony - have led her to research acoustics and psychoacoustics and how they intersect with human perception. In her primarily band-based practice, she’s cultivated long term relationships with a wide range of musicians, writing music specifically for their instrumental voices and personalities.

""I had an epiphany several years ago: I noticed that there was a rift between the way I played and the way I composed. As an improvisor I was interested in the saxophone as a creator of “sound,” and not just “pitch,” but my compositional world was limited to an exploration of the latter. I believe that there should be a continuum between my compositional and improvisational vocabulary, so I set out to bring those languages closer together.""
 

Photo by TJ Huff