Anne is working on a series of long-form essays that explore the intersection of nature, cognition, and music, and particularly, the parallels between thriving ecosystems and optimal ways of understanding and performing music.
Inspired by an early interest in the writings of Noam Chomsky and Fritjof Capra, her writing uses systems thinking to connect movement, focus, technique and conscious thought to the fields of ecology, neuroscience, music, cognition and philosophy. She hopes to turn her research into a book, and her writing has taken her to various artist residencies, including Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Washington State, Biophilium, which is based out of Canada, and Arteles Creative Center in Finland.
Anne works with pianist Emily Tian as ARc duET, performing 2-piano and 4-hand works in jazz and contemporary idioms. ARc duET is committed to programming composers with diverse voices and backgrounds.
ARc duET has been an ensemble since 2019. Friend and colleague Leslie La Barre wrote them a piece in 2018, and they have also collaborated with composer Ryan Brown and percussionist Jack van Geem, a retired San Francisco Symphony member. ARc duET recorded Steve Reich’s “Eight Lines” at Tiny Telephone Oakland in March of 2019 as part of a new version of the piece involving handmade synthesizers on the other instrument parts. Recent performances include a lecture recital at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, CA a show on the Old St. Hilary Series in Tiburon, CA and an appearance on the Vernon Salon Series in Palo Alto, CA.
Additionally, Anne is one half of the Lang/Rainwater Project, a duo partnership established over 15 years ago while both members were studying at Manhattan School of Music’s groundbreaking Contemporary Performance Program. The Lang/Rainwater Project’s mission is to expand the trombone-piano repertoire by working with under-represented groups and distinct voices of contemporary music.
While both trombonist William Lang and pianist Anne Rainwater specialize in contemporary music, they also perform a wide range of classical literature, from Bach and Schumann to young composers such as Alex Temple and Quinn Mason. They maintain an active commissioning portfolio dedicated to championing traditionally underrepresented composers, in addition to performing canonical trombone and piano works and transcriptions of classics. The Lang/Rainwater Project has performed across the United States, from tours of the South on Tulane University’s nienteForte series and Georgia’s Tuesdays’ Music Live series, to performances in the San Francisco Bay Area at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. They also participated in a 4-university residency and commissioning project in the Philadelphia area in the spring of 2023. In June of 2024, they performed together at Roulette in Brooklyn, New York, as part of composer Scott Wollschleger’s album release concert, playing Between Breath, a piece commissioned and premiered by them.
