Lisa Illean’s debut portrait album arcing, stilling, bending, gathering, released on NMC in June 2024, has been celebrated by critics. The four pieces on the disc take in orchestral, and ensemble, and chamber works in her output, and performed by Aura Go, the Australian National Academy of Music, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with David Robertson, GBSR Duo, David Zucchi, Michael Acker of the Experimentalstudio des SWR, Juliet Fraser, and Explore Ensemble. Listen to arcing, stilling, bending, gathering here.
Caught in a web of suspended animation, Illean’s music draws in the listener. Viewed as if through a microscope, details are enhanced are enhanced…to reveal their sonic inner structures…the hushed understated gestures of Illean’s music invite listeners to immerse themselves in a world where near silence and stillness shape the very fabric of its sound. Recommended.
Gramophone (Pwyll ap Siôn) August 2024
Illean offers us glimpses, moments, shapes, hues, and, ultimately a sense of stillness…an intimate atmosphere that is an once calming and disquieting.
BBC Music Magazine (Michael Beek) September 2024
Illean conjures an air of precarious beauty from her lightly woven fabric of filaments and intimations
The Wire September 2024
…one of those composers who can open up a space with just a few notes, her sensitive music entices us to pay careful attention to the sounds she chooses… As an experience, it’s somehow like stepping into a minimalist art gallery, as the sole viewer, walking around and pausing to observe every part of an artwork, letting each look reveal something new.
Limelight (Rebecca Franks) 8 August 2024 ★★★★1/2
…if you’re not drawn in after a few minutes of Illean’s arcing, stilling, bending, gathering, you’ve no soul. It’s extraordinary stuff…the music’s different layers variously, slowly overlap and occlude one another. Repeated listening throws up a wealth of colour and detail…Land’s End comes as an intoxicating jolt…the recording has incredible presence. Dissonant wind chords suggest bird calls, heard against seismic basso rumblings and eerie string chords. It’s all compelling, and already on my provisional ‘best of 2024’ list.
The Arts Desk (Graham Rickson), 8 June 2024
These four interesting, skilfully crafted pieces are definitely worth a listen. Expect meditative weavings of strings, a soprano that nestles naturally into the complex tapestry, a piano and even a pre-recorded zither.
de Volkskrant 27 June 2024 ★★★★
Illean has a striking feel for the elusive, writing music that’s not so much between states as finding exacting clarity in details that initially escape our notice…piano and the violin float and ripple through delicate sheets of wavering, unstable sonic gauze…A similar effect is presented on “Tiding II”…patiently unfolding constellations of sound and texture, like objects moving through a gravity-free atmosphere. Melodic fragments, harmonic swells, and rhythmic drift seem to cycle through the pieces randomly, but there’s a sharp design inside Illean’s writing that makes it all feel like natural phenomenon.
arcing, stilling, bending, gathering – a 19-minute piece for 12 strings, piano, and pre-recorded sounds (by Tilman Robinson) – opens sparsely and quietly. Glacial chords and floating tapestries of sound mingle, with a constantly shifting sense of focus. A film exploring the creation of the piece, with contributions from Illean, is available to watch here.
Land’s End for chamber orchestra received its first performance in 2016 from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Robertson. The 11-minute piece is inspired by the drawings of Vija Celmins, Illean has said, “…particularly those that use the ocean surface as the framework for an exploration in mark-making with incremental grades of graphite…surfaces act as forms through which subtle change can be perceived and felt.”
Tiding II (silentium) was premiered in 2021 by Trio Accanto and the SWR Experimental Studio at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The 17-minute work is part of a series exploring elemental patterns, inspired by the work of artist Christiane Baumgartner – in particular her 2013 woodcut Deep Water. A through-grown earth is a 15-minute five-part setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins for soprano, ensemble and pre-recorded sounds; it takes as its prompt the observed patterns of tapestry in the natural world that occur frequently Hopkins’ poems.