pc: Caroline Mariko-Stucky

“Uber-compelling…A must-see, must-hear…Annie’s creativity is astounding, to listen to her an education in deep listening as she pours so much beauty and intensity into her composing, choreographing, dancing and playing of the flute.” - Steph Thompson, ListenUpNYC

“…haunting…these dancers, together with Nikunen’s marvelous score, succeed…” -DanceCritical

“…daring, vulnerable, vividly expressive, and outstandingly imaginative.” -Jamie Clark

“There’s real imagination in this effecting music.” - Long Island Music Hall of Fame

“Nikunen dances and also plays the flute, both at a very high level…the fact that Ms. Nikunen also wrote the music and created the choreography sets this performance on a…higher plane.” -SoundWordSight Arts Magazine

About Annie…

Called “startling and brilliant” by PBS Arizona, Annie Nikunen is a composer, flutist, dancer and choreographer and curator who merges sound, physicality, and space. As a performer and creator, Annie has been involved with experimental music groups, interdisciplinary collectives, jazz combos, pit orchestras, improv groups, classical chamber and Baroque ensembles, orchestras, dance companies, indie albums, Taizé, and all sides of film (directing, composing, acting, editing, filming). Rooted in collective yet personal experiences, her work and performance span a wide variety of form, genre and medium, striving to make her work broadly relatable yet deeply personal, sonically and somatically communicating emotion as empirically and intimately as possible. She is inspired by sounds evoking movement and narratives reflecting human dynamics, inviting personal interpretation. Trained in ballet and at one point considering a professional ballet career, Annie chose to further her studies in music and craft a movement language embracing humanity rather than fighting it. She is keen to uncover deeper connections between movement and sound: how they relate to emotion, memory, and time, and furthermore how they can physically and sonically embody processes of brokenness and healing. She dissects compositional methodology through movement, and her theoretical understanding of music informs her choreography. 

Annie has performed and had her work presented across the US and Europe, in venues and institutions including Helsinki Music Centre, Tanglewood Music Center, Roulette, National Sawdust, Movement Research at Judson Church, Fondation des États Unis, the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Mark Morris Dance Group, The Clark Art Institute, HighLineNine for the Chelsea Music Festival, The Noguchi Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Living Arts Tulsa, Harn Museum of Art, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Bulgaria, Central Park, Miller Theater and The DiMenna Center for Classical Music. Her work has been performed by ensembles including The Phoenix Symphony, members of The Albany Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, the TMC Fromm Players, Unheard-of//Ensemble, ZOFO, BlackBox Ensemble, Earth Ears Ensemble, The Rhythm Method and Fonema Consort, as well as renowned soloists including Jeffrey Zeigler, Eleonor Sandresky, Melinda Faylor and Jamie Clark.

An avid collaborator, Annie has worked with artists across disciplines, including composer/guitarist/technologist Matt Sargent, composer/choreographer Sugar Vendil, dancer/choreographers Da’von Diane, Rohan Barghava and Kosta Karakashyan, artist/composer/writer/broadcaster Julian Day, flutist/mover Zara Lawler, cinematographers Anselm Havu and Kevin Chiu, and more. Constantly immersed in interdisciplinary collaboration, she has a wide spectrum of influences feeding her work. She has taught, led workshops and presented at NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, NYU Tisch, University of Central Florida, Stetson University, Five Towns College, Williams College, and Posey School of Dance. She has performed as part of residencies at NYU, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Florida, Kaufman’s Special Music School and more.

Referred to as the "...best flute player in the state of NY" by The Observer, Annie is a founding member of BlackBox Ensemble, for which she is flutist and Director of Artistic Planning, Marketing & Communications. She is also a flutist and dancer in Isogram, an interdisciplinary collective led by Sugar Vendil that interweaves sound, movement, and non-narrative theater, blurring boundaries between genres and embracing nonlinearity to challenge preconceived notions of performance, storytelling, and discipline. She plays with String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and has also performed with Miranda Cuckson and Nunc. Annie also served as Resident Composer-Choreographer and flutist/dancer of Periapsis Music & Dance. She is a former DJ at WKCR 89.9 FM NY, where she served as Business Manager and Director of the Classical Department. She hosted the coveted and beloved Afternoon Classical and Bach Hour each Friday, allowing her to seamlessly integrate storytelling with her fluency and extensive knowledge in both music and dance. Her interviewees included Ola Gjielo, Rachel Barton Pine, Anne Akiko Meyers, Miró Quartet, Colin Hinton, and Columbia University’s doctoral composers, among others.

Annie holds a MM in Composition from NYU and a BA in Music from Barnard College of Columbia University, during which she also studied contemporary flute performance at Manhattan School of Music with Tara O’Connor. Her research interests include sound-body connections, composer-choreographer relationships, embodied cognition, and sound’s relationships with gesture, language/text, space, time, emotion and memory. Annie has received recognition and fellowships from Tanglewood (2023 Composition Fellow), American Composers Forum, ASCAP and Columbia University. As an Artist Ambassador for Creatives Care, she is committed to cultivating safe spaces for artistic vulnerability and addressing its unique mental health challenges in service of its mission to ensure the future of the arts by providing access to affordable mental health care for artists.

Upcoming projects include an album with electronic composer/guitarist Matt Sargent, a new piece for violinist Miranda Cuckson and some new projects yet to be announced.

Annie grew up in Northport, NY on Long Island, and is currently based in Brooklyn. She loves tea, flower arranging, Pilates, walking and photography. Committed to interdisciplinary dialogue, Annie has her own newsletter, INTERDISC., connecting her work with broader cultural recommendations, spanning sound, movement, fashion, film, gastronomy and more.