For Trace

29 February 2024

The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, February 2024

The work of Belgian composer Maya Verlaak retains its homemade quality by using the most quotidian of materials. Her Fluxus-influenced 2012 “Tape Piece,” created with Andy Ingamells, instructs a pair of performers to wrap one another in tape, struggle to reach the end of their rolls, and then try to break free from this handiwork. This new portrait album sticks to more conventional sound sources, with some occasional digital interrogations. Verlaak created each piece with the performer in mind. As she writes in the album notes, “When I write a piece for a friend, or a musician who allows me to get to know the person behind the musician, the inspiration doesn’t grow from the usual superficial observations, but instead from the relationship with the person.” That process yields overwhelmingly intimate pieces where, in some cases, the performer sings wordless melodies alongside the minimal lines they play on their instruments, with computers injecting various unpredictable pitch choices or melodic shapes. On “Whispers,” for example, pianist Kate Ledger plays a series of chords and single notes shadowed by her own halting, almost tentative vocal sounds and deep exhalations, with a live electronic element holding certain passages together.In a piece written for the noted British composer Howard Skempton—“All English Music Is”—accordion sounds are amplified by a small speaker under the score. Its staves are drawn on a piece of fabric, and the signals from the speaker cause a series of small black sponges, which represent specific notes, to bounce around, changing the pitch and forcing the performer to adjust in real time. Ledger was so taken by the piece Verlaak created a version for her, too, starting with a different fragment of a British folk melody than Skempton’s version. The album ends with a tender miniature by Joseph Kudirka, warbling along with a customized music box melody.

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