Born and educated in Christchurch, Annea Lockwood went to England in 1961 to study composition. In the late 1960s she pioneered a new approach to organising musical ideas that was heavily influenced by her reading of John Cage's book Silence, along with childhood memories of environmental sounds in New Zealand. She first utilised this philosophy in The glass concert, which she performed many times. In the evening-long work, she drew a range of sonic effects from a diverse collection of industrial glass objects. In 1973 Lockwood moved to the United States. Settling in Crompond, New York, she became professor of music at Vassar College. After retirement she continued collaborating with poets, choreographers and visual artists, and composing performance works using life stories and environmental sounds. Since the 1990s her works have often incorporated electronic sounds and visual elements.