On 9 December Ruben Mattia Santorsa presents Lisa Illean’s Tiding for solo electric guitar at the Unerhörte Musik Festival in Berlin. The 7-minute work appears alongside pieces by Laurence Crane, Lisa Streich, Giulia Lorusso and Maurizio Pisati.
Like many of Illean’s pieces Tiding uses non-standard tunings. Each guitar string is retuned to an overtone of an 11 hertz ground fundamental. “It took me a long time to find the tunings—the right ‘colour’—for this piece”, Illean says. “Finding this was so important because in a way it is a monochrome piece: each phrase is a subtly different shade of the same hue.”
Tiding was the first in a series of pieces partly inspired by Christiane Baumgartner’s 2013 woodcut Deep Water. Illean has described her admiration for the way the “image evokes the perception of a liquid form through very precise means…The woodcut images approach abstraction – appearing endless – but bear the personal traces of an assiduous, intimate working method.”
Tiding was premiered online in 2021 by Huw Davies; it was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta. Yaron Deutsch has performed the work at TIME:SPANS – listen to his recording here – and the 2022 Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. The piece has also been taken up by Sean Shibe for the 2022 Norwich and Norfolk Festival this year; Sam Cave will perform the work at Wigmore Hall in March 2026.
The Tiding series explores elemental patterns. Tiding II, for saxophone, percussion, piano and electronics, was premiered in 2021 by Trio Accanto and the SWR Experimental Studio at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. It featured on arcing, stilling, bending, gathering, the celebrated 2024 portrait album from NMC, performed by David Zucchi and GBSR Duo, who gave the UK premiere of the work at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
In October 2025 Ensemble Nikel premiered Tiding III at the Festival d’Automne at IRCAM. The 21-minute work is scored for four players and pre-recorded sounds. Alongside soprano saxophone, electric guitar, and piano, there is also a part for re-tuned prepared acoustic guitar, laid flat and played with a tone bar and mallet or brush. “As when one contemplates the natural world itself”, Illean writes of the piece, “my hope is to create the conditions where time can be experienced differently, and where both those performing and those joining in listening are attuned to subtlety and the potential for gentle change.”