She is a composer based in New York City. Her compositions include fully notated acoustic as well as electronic works. Her work incorporates well-tempered and de-tuned instruments, improvisation, traditional and unconventional techniques. Many of her compositions are inspired by unorthodox and extra-musical sounds, e. g. Shoot the Player Piano, a work for music and video featuring an imaginary orchestra of early mechanical instruments; Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires, a cd of compositions for de-tuned and destroyed pianos; and Cranks and Cactus Needles, for flute, piano, violin and cello, which evokes the skipping, warping, surface noise and deterioration of an ancient 78rpm record.
Gosfield's works have been performed worldwide at festivals including iscm World Music Days, 'Warsaw Autumn', 'Wien Modern', 'Settembra Musica', 'Other Minds', 'Taktlos', 'Musique Action', Musique Actuelle', 'Prague New Music Marathon' and 'Bang-On-A-Can'; by ensembles such as the 'Bang-On-A-Can All Stars', New Band (Harry Partch instruments), the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, 'Spit Orchestra', 'Agon', 'Rova Sax Quartet', 'Flux String Quartet', 'Talujon Percussion Quartet', 'Pearls Before Swine', 'Rélâche', 'Present Music', and her own ensemble, in which she plays the piano and sampling keyboards.
Annie Gosfield has received grants and commissions from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the American Music Center, the Amercian Composers Forum, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Siemens Kultur Programm, The Fund for U. S. Artists and International Festivals, Harvestworks and the Djerassi Foundation. She has performed and collaborated with many artists, especially with her partner Roger Kleier. Her music has been used by dance companies worldwide.

Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery was inspired by machine and factory sounds: the metallic scrapes, squeaks and bangs; the ambient buzzes and whines; and the imperfect rhythmic repeats of heavy machinery. During a recent residency in Nuremberg, Germany, I conducted six weeks of research into these utilitarian industrial sounds, visiting factories, observing and listening to all types of machinery, and recording sounds on site. I was particularly fascinated by the sense of gradually changing environments that occur in a large factory as the sounds shift from the ambient hum of fluorescent lights, to the grinding harmonics of buzzsaws, to the rhythmic crashes and bangs of huge metal presses. Machine rhythms go in and out of phase, dynamics vary wildly, and in environment of ever-changing activity and noise, the frequency spectrum fluctuates from sub-audio rumbles to barely audible high-pitched whines.
My interpretation of these shifting environments ranges from the literal (rhythmic transcription of the recordings that I made on site) to the fanciful (Russian constructivist inspired evocations of industrial activity). Strings focus on microtonal variations of pitch, replacing equal-temperament with the untuned buzzing, humming and grinding sounds of machines. Percussion instruments are all of indefinite pitch, and imitate the banging, scraping, and hissing cacophony of the factory.
If all pieces are biographical, this is no exception. When I first started work on Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery, I awoke to a veritable lexicon of machine and work-related sounds: a large crew of jackhammers tearing up my street, men of scaffolds hammering away at the brick facade outside my window, and a symphony of band saws, crowbars, and sledgehammers renovating the apartment upstairs. Trying to work through the constant noise created more moments of desperation than inspiration for me, but the cacophony and hammering always brought me back to the random rhythms and shifting patterns of utilitarian noise.
Annie Gosfield