Maya Verlaak

A Deviation for Approximation

2022

For video, live electronics and audience participation
Premiered at KM28, Berlin, 11/05/2022

This work uses the cardinal directions from a simple cycled route as a musical structure. The exact same route, as defined by coordinates on a compass, was cycled in different cities and the different city planning created variations of the route. The compositional process investigates the idea of approximation and how one route can became a musical variation of another route. Each city is different, so every time the route is performed, the initial map develops into variations. I see this as a musical process that can be visualized and performed. During a live performance, the audience can choose to watch documentation of the route, walk the route, or walk the route virtually with the aid of a self-build interactive computer application. This documentation shows the performance of the audience in Mechelen, in December 2023. They were given special pedals to interact with the maps on the video screen and the audience created the music by virtually walking the routes on the maps.

Sanding
2020

for piano on a beach
Commissioned by Dag in de Branding Festival, NL
Written for Saskia Lankhoorn

This work was commissioned by Saskia Lankhoorn for Dag in de Branding festival in The Hague, (NL). Saskia organized a concert on the beach and the festival positioned several pianos on the beach for her to perform on. I created a place-specific work which involved pouring sand into the piano. The musical material I composed for the pianist was derived from the sound of sand. I more specifically took the recordings from my performance of Beach Bums, a work by Robert Blatt. In this performance I roll in the sand with a camera on my head. To make Saskia’s score of “Sanding” I created a computer application that selects pitches from one roll in the sand but deletes common pitches in the next roll in the sand and adds pitches again in the next roll. I transcribed this process for Saskia to perform on the piano and the process of creating this musical material is also conceptually supported by the performance of it. In the performance of “Sanding”, Saskia plays this written musical material and I approach the piano to slowly pour sand into the piano. In this live process, the piano hammers are increasingly being blocked by the sand from hitting the strings in the piano, leaving a selection of notes to sound.

A Hard Day’s Night
2018

for 6 – 12 electric guitars
Commissioned by Ensemble Klang, NL

In this work I question the etiquettes of a Contemporary Classical Music audience. I make the audience aware of it and break their usual routines. A Contemporary Classical Music audience rarely shouts ‘Woo!’ out of appreciation for a performer, in contrast to a Rock concert where audiences are sometimes so loud that you are unable to hear the music. When this happens at Rock concerts it seems to me that the audience creates their own music with their shouting voices. Such events are documented in many concerts by The Beatles in the 1960s, and are also parodied in the movie A Hard Day’s Night. During my compositional process I was reminded of this movie and decided to make direct reference to it. In my work A Hard Day’s Night I hold a large sign with ‘Woo!’ written on it in bold letters. In doing so, I insinuate that the audience should shout “Woo!” when I display the sign. If the audience reacts and makes a sound, my self-built computer programme analyses the pitches they shout and creates a chord for the performers to play. In some performances this chord can alter the musical material the performers are already playing. In other performances the musicians simply play the analyzed chord created by the audience.

Preview the score here

Song & Dance – An excessively elaborate effort to explain or justify 
2017

Written for Ensemble Modern Academy, DE
Commissioned by Ulysses Network

Composers often talk about their work in order to justify it, and when they do, they analyse it. To directly highlight the theme of justification in this piece, I developed an idea for the ensemble to not receive any written music from me, but rather receive a justification of the music instead. They receive a musical analysis of the work, rather than a conventionally notated version of the work. While performing my piece, they are directly engaged with this justification of the piece. The material I analysed is in three sections: A, A’ and B, and is reconstructed as a three-part music analysis game. Playing the game recomposes the work but most importantly, the musicians have complete insight into the construction of the piece. To play the game they have to use the analysis material and follow the rules, which I constructed and developed from my analysis of an existing piece.

Darmstadt Hugging Music 
2016

In 2016 I participated in the Composer-Performer workshop, mentored by Jennifer Walshe and David Helbich and taking place at the Darmstadt Summer Course. I was excited to meet new people and to share ideas about different ways of working in the world of contemporary music, but my experience of the course was very different from what I had expected. I noticed that the participants were very critical of each other’s work, and there was a sense of aggressive competition everywhere. These observations provided the impetus for a socially engaging performance-intervention. I decided to counter the hostility and divisiveness that I witnessed with a positive gesture of care, by hugging all the composers and performers attending the final presentation of the Composer-Performer workshop whilst wearing a red t-shirt printed with the words: ‘I LOVE DARMSTADT’. My waist was covered in hundreds of fabric bracelets, which I would distribute to each person as I hugged them, thus preventing me from hugging the same person twice. In total 220 people received hugs over the course of the three-hour event. Later on in the evening, when people were still socializing in and around the gallery, I noticed that audience members were hugging each other in order to collect more bracelets, or to confer a bracelet on someone who had not been hugged.