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Reviews
February 2021
Interview in Luister magazine, NL
click the pictures to read the article (in Dutch)
22 January 2021
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
Múm
was an Icelandic group with singers channeling the wisely innocent
voices of children while a lush landscape, rife with music boxes and
other liquid-crystal sonorities, multihued the adjacent soundspaces.
There is something similarly open about this music, something so
unpredictably predictable, so comforting, so quietly inclusive! Belgian
composer Maya Verlaak delves to the depths of experience’s networks
while observing from just far enough to escape the iron grip and
rationalizations of memory. This is music in which even the harshest
sounds melt into a winning simplicity, a world of sound and sense in
symbiosis.
It would be too easy to point toward modality to explain such a beautifully optimistic vision. After all, “All British Music is Greensleeves” tears that increasingly irrelevant construct to shreds in a hurry as two layers of sound, one prerecorded, spin bits of the tune down the dimly lit corridors conjoining memory and reflection. Chord, cluster and motive blur boundaries, even as space ensures a tidy trail of readily identifiable components needling consciousness reluctantly toward recognition. It’s a world with which Ives or Mahler might have made contact, had chamber music been more in their sights, such are the buds and blooms of poly-event amidst distantly lit string writing that refuses to answer Ives’ perennial question. The unfurling harmonies, formed of motives in quasi-counterpoint, are inextricably linked with their kaleidoscopic timbres. Recurrence is both evident and backgrounded but none so blatant as the delicious silences, almost periodic, separating the streamlined multivalences. Fortunately, as with many Apartment House recordings, vibrato is nearly absent.
The “Formation” pieces place a similarly subversive emphasis on relationship so subliminal that a simple listen won’t unlock the door or open the blinds. Any hats doffed toward conventional chord or set are quickly displaced by the gentle but insistent winds of change emanating from a vocal imperative or an intoned repetition. Mark Knoop and Sarah Saviet are in something near dialogue with overlapping technologies guided by a compositional voice whose questions also seek a malleable answer. The openness at the heart of Verlaak’s work stems from the various paths through subversion, re-subversion and integration integral to the majority of these pieces. What, in the case of “Song and Dance,” do performers do when confronted only with the analysis, or justification, for a musical score rather than with the score itself? What happens when the justification becomes the score? How is it possible, practical or desirable to confront musical parameters neither heard nor witnessed? The wonderful thing about such conceptions is that they really form the metanarrative of all artistic endeavor. No art, no matter how explicit, relinquishes all of its secrets, just as no single pitch or sonority, even those as pure as Apartment House offers with staggering consistency, is the actual embodiment of that sound. Composers and performers deal in approximations, and it is to Verlaak’s credit that the processes have been rendered at least partially transparent with such beautifully cooperative forces to give them form and voice.
Marc Medwin - Dusted Magazine
https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/641027296523943936/apartment-house-on-another-timbre-three
17 January 2021
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
There’s
more irony in this title than first appears. This collection of pieces
by Verlaak is itself a hearkening back to a golden age, but her
reiteration of the past deals with the rediscovery of forgotten ideas
and making them new. Time and again, her compositions recall the spirit
of exploration and discovery in the British experimental music scene of
the early 1970s. Amongst the alumni of the Scratch Orchestra and their
fans, the dividing line between music and art had never before been so
dangerously blurred. They too reworked the past, drawing upon folk and
popular classics and then subjecting them to analytical processes with
varying degrees of irrationality. This British strand of the
avant-garde was typically playful and subversive, but with a gentle
side that embraced amateurism and acknowledged the inherent
sentimentality of their means and methods. It was a fertile scene, but
its fading seems in retrospect to be as much a product of commercial
forces as of ideas moving on. By the 1980s, much of what was presented
as the cutting edge of music was given over to second-guessing the
audience’s tastes in a quest for ‘appeal’. For a younger generation, a
cursory study of the early 70’s uncovered a lot of unfinished business.
In Another Timbre’s All English Music Is Greensleeves, Verlaak brings back this quiet, forgotten 70’s as a living tradition. The title work, which has been performed live in various forms, does not deal with the implied subject as an artefact, but as the outcome of the history of English music teaching and performance practice, as observed by a young Belgian composer recently arrived from studies at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. In a modern twist, the music’s controlling processes are fluid and automated by a computer which decides which pitches chosen by the ensemble will cause a pre-recorded performance of the same piece to start, or stop. It’s a clever exploitation of the practice of sight-reading, and Apartment House’s rendition here captures the genteel, pocket-sized grandeur suggested in the title, refracted into a more fragmentary, ghostly formality.
Some of Verlaak’s pieces have tended towards the stunty (cf her Tape Piece collaboration with Andy Ingamells or Females premiered at Music We’d Like To Hear in 2018) but in this collection the focus remains on the music. Ideas are clearly present to substantiate the sounds we hear, but their means of operation remain tantalisingly unclear without further explication. The two solo works, Formation de Sarah and Formation de Mark respectively pit violinist Sarah Saviet and pianist Mark Knoop against a remorseless computer-generated tutor. Each performance creates a new system of pitches to which the performer must respond and negotiate. In Formation de Sarah, violin plays against sine tones and bowed nails; for Formation de Mark the relationship between performer and computer model is more fraught, with electronic tones replaced by recordings of an untrained voice attempting to sing perfect pitch. The computer’s vocalised cues sound more like a rebuke than a guide. The wobbly coexistence of objective formal rigour with human imperfection, with mechanisms of reproduction as a confounding factor, recall the early 70s works by composers like Gavin Bryars and Christopher Hobbs while still posing vital questions surrounding authenticity to the present-day listener (and performer). The music is still direct and clear, using its simplicity of means to bring those complicating perturbations of sound to the surface.
The remaining ensemble pieces are more overtly playful, in a serious, childlike manner. Lark uses formative childhood experiences as material and means, transcribing recovered cassettes of the four-year old composer improvising songs and using a music-box to regulate the musicians. The simple melodies and cultural references add pawky sentimentality to the staggered runs of single notes, always slightly off-kilter. Song and Dance ‘An excessively elaborate effort to explain or justify’ is an exercise in analysis taken in earnest, expecting the musicians to interpret a listening study of the music and infer the music from the written analysis, at a remove from the notes themselves. In each of these pieces, the joke is for (on?) the musicians, but the wit is audible to the listener as the ensemble struggles to achieve a coherent performance despite everyone’s best efforts. With Apartment House playing, it’s probably not much of a struggle really, but they beautifully convey the delicate synthesis of gracefulness and humour required to make these pieces work most effectively, without ever needing to milk it for pathos or a laugh.
Ben Harper - Boring Like A Drill.
http://www.cookylamoo.com/boringlikeadrill/2021/01/maya-verlaak-all-english-music-is-greensleeves.html
5 January 2021
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
De
Belgische componiste Maya Verlaak, afkomstig uit Gent, maakt met ‘All
English Music is Greensleeves’ haar debuut bij Another Timbre. Mede een
bewijs van het feit dat het werk van deze nog jonge componiste, die
overigens ook studeerde aan het Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag,
steeds meer erkenning krijgt. De vijf stukken op dit album bewijzen hoe
terecht dat is. De titel ontleende Verlaak aan Gilius van Bergeijk.
Toen Verlaak aansluitend aan Den Haag in Birmingham ging studeren, zei
hij schertsend, dat Engelse componisten niets anders doen dan iedere
keer ‘Greensleeves’ herschrijven. Qua stijl past de muziek van Verlaak
uitstekend bij dit label. ‘Lark’ bijvoorbeeld is een prachtig
klankspel, waarin vooral de combinatie piano – klokkenspel opvalt,
vooral als we dit afzetten tegen de klankwolken van de strijkers. Over
het titelstuk laat ik Verlaak graag zelf aan het woord (in het
interview op de website): “I started questioning the nature of the
musical score in general, and asked myself the question, what if the
notes on the score aren’t the pitches musicians should play to hear the
music, but the pitches that make them stop playing the music? The
“music” is variations on Greensleeves pre-recorded by each instrument
in the ensemble…As a result there are two sounding layers, the
pre-recorded music (layer 1), which is started or stopped by a computer
programme and controlled by the pitches the musicians choose to play
(layer 2)”. Als derde eensemblestuk klinkt ‘Song and Dance’ dat reeds
eerder op deze blog voorbij kwam, aangezien het klonk tijdens het
Gaudeamusfestival van 2017.
Naast drie ensemblestukken bevat het album twee solostukken, speciaal geschreven voor deze solisten van het ensemble: ‘Formation de Sarah’ wordt uitgevoerd door violiste Sarah Saviet, ‘Formation de Mark’ door pianist Mark Knoop. Het zijn beide vrij complexe stukken waarin de uitvoerder zowel wordt geleid door een partituur als door een computer die tijdens de uitvoering nadere instructies geeft.
Ben Taffijn - Nieuwe Noten
https://www.nieuwenoten.nl/?p=10521
24 November 2020
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
In
de compositiestijl van Maya Verlaak (Gent, 1990) staat het spelelement
centraal. Via haar werk vraagt zij expliciet om verwondering van de
uitvoerders en het publiek. Op haar jongste CD “All English Music is
Greensleeves” laat zij haar associatieve vermogens de vrije loop.
In het toch al afwisselende landschap van hedendaagse componisten is Verlaak een geval apart. Het titelstuk (2014, rev. 2019) refereert voortdurend aan de gelijknamige Engelse evergreen, waaruit in allerlei vormen wordt geciteerd. Het thema wordt uit elkaar gehaald, in een andere volgorde opnieuw gemonteerd, sommige delen worden weggelaten om later weer op te duiken, de ritmen worden door elkaar geschud en van een strik voorzien, motiefjes worden naar voren en achteren geschoven, soms lijkt een canon boven te drijven. Maar ondanks het klutsen en roeren blijft Greensleeves overeind. Dat is de kracht van Verlaaks aanpak. Zij neemt vaak afstand van haar compositorisch onderwerp zodat ruimte voor reflectie ontstaat. Zij kiest voor een positie als buitenstaander. Maar omdat haar partituren niet persé hoeven te worden opgevat als gebetonneerde instructies, is het resultaat meestal exotisch en verrassend, met hier een daar een vleugje humor.
Speeldoosje
Zij probeert met minimale referenties een maximaal resultaat te behalen. Dat blijkt uit het openingsstuk Lark (2014, rev. 2019) waarin het klokkenspel wordt ingezet als imitatie van het speeldoosje uit haar kindertijd. Referenties aan het Franse kinderliedje Alouette vervolmaken een toonspraak van onbezorgdheid en appeltaart. Het stuk is gebaseerd op ingehouden unisono klanken, afgewisseld met vlinderachtige gebroken akkoorden. Hoorn en klarinet staan in voor de stabiliteit en de warmte van een thuis, het klokkenspel met de piano en de viool zorgen voor avontuur en plezier.
In Song and Dance (2017) kiest Verlaak voor een haar typerend compositorisch proces — het spel. De musici beschikken niet over een uitgewerkte partituur maar moeten het doen met een analyse en een paar spelregels over o.a. de dynamiek, de openingsnoot, mogelijke intervallen en de volgorde waarin de musici op elkaar reageren. Het resultaat van dit spel is een gracieus weefsel van tonen die overgenomen en afgestoten worden. Twee percussionisten (schuurpapier) staan in voor de stabiliteit. Het komt over als een vraag- en antwoordspel waarbij het antwoord minder ter zake doet.
De CD wordt gecompleteerd met twee korte experimentele solostukken waarin de muzikant steeds wordt gecorrigeerd door een computer. Formation de Sarah (Sarah Saviet, viool) en Formation de Mark (Mark Knoop, piano) verleiden de uitvoerenden met reacties op voortdurend veranderend muzikaal materiaal. Ook hier komt het spelelement op de eerste plaats. Bij Maya Verlaak gaat het immers om het spel, niet om de knikkers.
Wynold Verweij - Klassiek Centraal
https://klassiek-centraal.be/recencies/speelse-associaties-op-nieuwe-cd-van-maya-verlaak/
13 November 2020
Cassette: Tape Piece - released by Birmingham Record Company
Not
sure how many times I’ll listen to this, and you’re fucked if you stick
it on at a party, but I can get behind this absurdist performance art
piece. The ‘album’ is 12 separate recordings of verlaak and Ingamells
wrapping rolls of tape around each other then frantically trying to
break free — with their panting breath and rubber sole squeaks the only
respite from the harsh tape sound.
They’re multi-instrumentalists too — using Poundland Gaffer Tape, WH Smith Clear Tape and Eurogiant Masking Tape, among other sticky delights. Weirdly addictive!
Conor McCaffrey - All the right noises
https://mookidmusic.com/2020/11/13/all-the-right-noises-october-2020/
3 November 2020
Cassette: Tape Piece - released by Birmingham Record Company
For
the 17'52" duration of Tape Piece Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells can
be heard wrapping rolls of sticky tape around each other's clothed
bodies and then, when all the tape has been used and after a brief
pause, struggling to break free. The audio residue of their hectic
physical entanglement is at once a blatant absurdity and a comic tour
de force; a pun translated into slapstick action preserved on cassette,
the action taped and the pun made literal. Broadly in the ebullient
spirit of Fluxus, the couple's tussle has itw osn obscure rhythms and
binding, grappling, streching and ripping, its own clenched, involuted
language of squeaks, tears and tugs, grunts, gasps and pauses for
breath. Absurd, and curiously life-enhancing.
The Wire
28 October 2020
Cassette: Tape Piece - released by Birmingham Record Company
From
music jammed with notes, we pass to Tape Piece: music that is
note-free, if it is music at all. The sounds heard derive from Maya
Verlaak and Andy Ingamells wrapping their intertwined bodies with rolls
of household tape (cue squeaky rips), pausing a moment (audible
panting), then struggling to break free (crackle, pops, further
squeaks).
I especially enjoyed the bass-register tones of Poundland gaffer tape, applied in track nine. YouTube videos usefully document the couple’s live act, but sonic purists and all who live with their ears wide open may relish this 17-minute compilation, available as a download or, appropriately, on an old-fashioned cassette tape.
Geoff Brown - The Times
21 October 2019
Het eerste gebod voor de bezoeker van Transit zegt dat je je oren wijd open moet zetten om de taal van al die stemmen zo goed mogelijk te verstaan. Maar dat was soms makkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. Als je na concert nummer vier bijvoorbeeld plots geconfronteerd werd met een ingewikkeld klankspel tussen een groepje musici en een computer. Het zag er zeker leuk uit voor Ensemble Interface, waarvoor Maya Verlaak het conceptuele stuk schreef. Maar voor de luisteraar, die verwoed probeerde te volgen wat er aan de hand was, was er in het stuk misschien te weinig plaats.
De Standaard, Newspaper, BE
30 June 2019
Strandzand in de piano
Slim op de gelegenheid toegesneden: de inzending van Maya Verlaak. In Sanding legde de Gentse componist een herhalende pianoriedel het zwijgen op door in eigen persoon potten strandzand in het hamermechaniek te kiepen.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/06/30/piano-in-de-golven-bij-dag-in-de-branding-op-haagse-zuiderstrand-a3965587
18 April 2019
Maya Verlaak’s highly conceptual Evidence-based (2018) asked the performers to reconstruct a pre-composed piece for harpsichord that had been deleted. From various pieces of ‘evidence’, including a written analysis and a melody derived from the ‘natural harmonics’ of the original piece, the performers attempted to regenerate the work. Retro Disco’s examination of the evidence led them in a very 1980s video game direction with the three performers using hand-held controllers to manipulate live electronics while walking constantly around the stage. The piece did seem to be genuinely ‘fun’, and it would be interesting to compare the results of this puzzle with other ensembles’ interpretations to see how close or far apart the musical results happen to be.
https://journalofmusic.com/criticism/adventures-new-music-fringe-0
July 2018
But Tape Piece (2012) by Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells achieved something meaningful for both ears and eyes as these two composers rolled around the floor, ripping sellotape off each other’s (clothed) bodies. The falsetto squeals of the sellotape launched fragmentary melodies into the air. This piece was witty and fun.
https://frieze.com/article/searching-new-intimacy-london-contemporary-music-festival
December 2017
Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells’ Tape Piece – which requires performers to wrap themselves up in sellotape and then extricate themselves – also proved something of a hit. Full disclosure: I had performed this piece with Jack Sheen in Manchester a few weeks earlier; on that occasion it had been a kind of awkward if affectionate fumble. Here it was slicker, sexier, more professional even, though maybe less cute.
Tempo, Volume 72, Issue 285, Cambridge University Press, UK
September 2017
De Gentse Maya Verlaak bewandelt een andere weg. In ‘SONG & DANCE: An excessively elaborate effort to explain or justify’ staat de analyse van een hedendaags muziekstuk centraal. Als uitgangspunt nam ze een ouder stuk dat ze grondig analyseerde en verwerkte tot een soort van spelsimulatie die weer voor de diverse groepen in het ensemble: strijkers, blazers, slagwerkers en piano als basismateriaal geldt. Het levert een harmonieuze compositie op met een zeker hallucinerend effect. Opvallend is het geluid dat de slagwerkers produceren en dat bestaat uit het met houtblokjes wrijven over diverse soorten schuurpapier.
http://www.nieuwenoten.nl/?p=4012
July 2017
In Maya Verlaak’s KlangfarbenTanz, it takes the form of an interactive sculpture that is physically altered by a flautist’s sound. In each case, the model of the score as a transcription of, or set of instructions for, the ‘work’ has been abandoned in favour of a concept of the score as a dynamic object that is—perhaps—more of a facet of the performance of the piece than a lasting trace of the compositional process. Taken together, the pieces presented are a statement of a number of possible positions from which the ‘work’ of music might be viewed in the present day, and offer a discussion of the relationship of the work of composition and performance with the ‘work’ of music.
http://musicandphilosophy.ac.uk/events/mpsg2017/asc2017maap/
February 2017
Next came Andy Ingamells and Maya Verlaak's Tape Piece performed by Edward Henderson and Andy Ingamells. When described Tape Piece sounds rather idiotic, the two men wrestled with each other and wrapped themselves in Sellotape, and then ripped it off each other again. But the sounds thus created were striking and rather wonderful.
http://www.planethugill.com/2017/02/new-teeth4-bastard-assignments.html
November 2016
While Andy Ingamells’ and Maya Verlaak’s Tape Piece suggested a fully-developed electronic work for magnetic tape, Kohl and Maryhew approached each other armed with rolls of Scotch tape. The two proceeded to wrap each other into what looked like a very uncomfortable hug until each roll had been depleted. Then they began to snap the tape as they unraveled themselves. Then — Kohl and Maryhew repeated the process, first with masking tape, then with duct tape. While sonically similar, the different strengths of the adhesives provided a gratifying result — and wads of used tape on the Bop Stop floor.
https://clevelandclassical.com/ensemble-pamplemousse-mocrep-at-the-bop-stop-nov-6/
June 2016
Upper-gallery trumpets here had also figured in a neat little opener, Carrier, by Belgian post-grad student Maya Verlaak, a three-minute fanfare based on acronyms of ACBH, as blazing as anything by Janacek, and tautly delivered under Christopher Houlding. Nobody wanted to leave at the end of this very special concert.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/review-adrian-boult-hall-closing-11530199
September 2015
De Vlaamse Maya Verlaak trok de aandacht met een stuk voor spijkerviool. Ze had deze term letterlijk genomen en vier spijkers op een plankje getimmerd, die met een strijkstok worden aangestreken. De zo gegenereerde (boven)tonen hadden een etherische, haast engelachtige klankschoonheid, maar Verlaak kan nog veel winnen door ook melodische ontwikkeling in te bouwen.
https://cultureelpersbureau.nl/2015/09/alexander-khubeev-wint-gaudeamus-award-2015/?highlight=Verlaak
September 2014
De opener was een ironisch werk van de Vlaamse Maya Verlaak, All Dutch music is Andriessen. De titel, die helaas niet zo ver bezijden de waarheid is, werd ingevuld door Volharding-achtige muziek, afgewisseld door tonale, haast Mozartiaanse fragmenten. De uitvoering was jammer genoeg wat onvast.
https://www.musiqolog.nl/?p=159
Interview in Luister magazine, NL
click the pictures to read the article (in Dutch)
22 January 2021
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
Múm
was an Icelandic group with singers channeling the wisely innocent
voices of children while a lush landscape, rife with music boxes and
other liquid-crystal sonorities, multihued the adjacent soundspaces.
There is something similarly open about this music, something so
unpredictably predictable, so comforting, so quietly inclusive! Belgian
composer Maya Verlaak delves to the depths of experience’s networks
while observing from just far enough to escape the iron grip and
rationalizations of memory. This is music in which even the harshest
sounds melt into a winning simplicity, a world of sound and sense in
symbiosis.It would be too easy to point toward modality to explain such a beautifully optimistic vision. After all, “All British Music is Greensleeves” tears that increasingly irrelevant construct to shreds in a hurry as two layers of sound, one prerecorded, spin bits of the tune down the dimly lit corridors conjoining memory and reflection. Chord, cluster and motive blur boundaries, even as space ensures a tidy trail of readily identifiable components needling consciousness reluctantly toward recognition. It’s a world with which Ives or Mahler might have made contact, had chamber music been more in their sights, such are the buds and blooms of poly-event amidst distantly lit string writing that refuses to answer Ives’ perennial question. The unfurling harmonies, formed of motives in quasi-counterpoint, are inextricably linked with their kaleidoscopic timbres. Recurrence is both evident and backgrounded but none so blatant as the delicious silences, almost periodic, separating the streamlined multivalences. Fortunately, as with many Apartment House recordings, vibrato is nearly absent.
The “Formation” pieces place a similarly subversive emphasis on relationship so subliminal that a simple listen won’t unlock the door or open the blinds. Any hats doffed toward conventional chord or set are quickly displaced by the gentle but insistent winds of change emanating from a vocal imperative or an intoned repetition. Mark Knoop and Sarah Saviet are in something near dialogue with overlapping technologies guided by a compositional voice whose questions also seek a malleable answer. The openness at the heart of Verlaak’s work stems from the various paths through subversion, re-subversion and integration integral to the majority of these pieces. What, in the case of “Song and Dance,” do performers do when confronted only with the analysis, or justification, for a musical score rather than with the score itself? What happens when the justification becomes the score? How is it possible, practical or desirable to confront musical parameters neither heard nor witnessed? The wonderful thing about such conceptions is that they really form the metanarrative of all artistic endeavor. No art, no matter how explicit, relinquishes all of its secrets, just as no single pitch or sonority, even those as pure as Apartment House offers with staggering consistency, is the actual embodiment of that sound. Composers and performers deal in approximations, and it is to Verlaak’s credit that the processes have been rendered at least partially transparent with such beautifully cooperative forces to give them form and voice.
Marc Medwin - Dusted Magazine
https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/641027296523943936/apartment-house-on-another-timbre-three
17 January 2021
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
There’s
more irony in this title than first appears. This collection of pieces
by Verlaak is itself a hearkening back to a golden age, but her
reiteration of the past deals with the rediscovery of forgotten ideas
and making them new. Time and again, her compositions recall the spirit
of exploration and discovery in the British experimental music scene of
the early 1970s. Amongst the alumni of the Scratch Orchestra and their
fans, the dividing line between music and art had never before been so
dangerously blurred. They too reworked the past, drawing upon folk and
popular classics and then subjecting them to analytical processes with
varying degrees of irrationality. This British strand of the
avant-garde was typically playful and subversive, but with a gentle
side that embraced amateurism and acknowledged the inherent
sentimentality of their means and methods. It was a fertile scene, but
its fading seems in retrospect to be as much a product of commercial
forces as of ideas moving on. By the 1980s, much of what was presented
as the cutting edge of music was given over to second-guessing the
audience’s tastes in a quest for ‘appeal’. For a younger generation, a
cursory study of the early 70’s uncovered a lot of unfinished business.In Another Timbre’s All English Music Is Greensleeves, Verlaak brings back this quiet, forgotten 70’s as a living tradition. The title work, which has been performed live in various forms, does not deal with the implied subject as an artefact, but as the outcome of the history of English music teaching and performance practice, as observed by a young Belgian composer recently arrived from studies at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. In a modern twist, the music’s controlling processes are fluid and automated by a computer which decides which pitches chosen by the ensemble will cause a pre-recorded performance of the same piece to start, or stop. It’s a clever exploitation of the practice of sight-reading, and Apartment House’s rendition here captures the genteel, pocket-sized grandeur suggested in the title, refracted into a more fragmentary, ghostly formality.
Some of Verlaak’s pieces have tended towards the stunty (cf her Tape Piece collaboration with Andy Ingamells or Females premiered at Music We’d Like To Hear in 2018) but in this collection the focus remains on the music. Ideas are clearly present to substantiate the sounds we hear, but their means of operation remain tantalisingly unclear without further explication. The two solo works, Formation de Sarah and Formation de Mark respectively pit violinist Sarah Saviet and pianist Mark Knoop against a remorseless computer-generated tutor. Each performance creates a new system of pitches to which the performer must respond and negotiate. In Formation de Sarah, violin plays against sine tones and bowed nails; for Formation de Mark the relationship between performer and computer model is more fraught, with electronic tones replaced by recordings of an untrained voice attempting to sing perfect pitch. The computer’s vocalised cues sound more like a rebuke than a guide. The wobbly coexistence of objective formal rigour with human imperfection, with mechanisms of reproduction as a confounding factor, recall the early 70s works by composers like Gavin Bryars and Christopher Hobbs while still posing vital questions surrounding authenticity to the present-day listener (and performer). The music is still direct and clear, using its simplicity of means to bring those complicating perturbations of sound to the surface.
The remaining ensemble pieces are more overtly playful, in a serious, childlike manner. Lark uses formative childhood experiences as material and means, transcribing recovered cassettes of the four-year old composer improvising songs and using a music-box to regulate the musicians. The simple melodies and cultural references add pawky sentimentality to the staggered runs of single notes, always slightly off-kilter. Song and Dance ‘An excessively elaborate effort to explain or justify’ is an exercise in analysis taken in earnest, expecting the musicians to interpret a listening study of the music and infer the music from the written analysis, at a remove from the notes themselves. In each of these pieces, the joke is for (on?) the musicians, but the wit is audible to the listener as the ensemble struggles to achieve a coherent performance despite everyone’s best efforts. With Apartment House playing, it’s probably not much of a struggle really, but they beautifully convey the delicate synthesis of gracefulness and humour required to make these pieces work most effectively, without ever needing to milk it for pathos or a laugh.
Ben Harper - Boring Like A Drill.
http://www.cookylamoo.com/boringlikeadrill/2021/01/maya-verlaak-all-english-music-is-greensleeves.html
5 January 2021
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
De
Belgische componiste Maya Verlaak, afkomstig uit Gent, maakt met ‘All
English Music is Greensleeves’ haar debuut bij Another Timbre. Mede een
bewijs van het feit dat het werk van deze nog jonge componiste, die
overigens ook studeerde aan het Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag,
steeds meer erkenning krijgt. De vijf stukken op dit album bewijzen hoe
terecht dat is. De titel ontleende Verlaak aan Gilius van Bergeijk.
Toen Verlaak aansluitend aan Den Haag in Birmingham ging studeren, zei
hij schertsend, dat Engelse componisten niets anders doen dan iedere
keer ‘Greensleeves’ herschrijven. Qua stijl past de muziek van Verlaak
uitstekend bij dit label. ‘Lark’ bijvoorbeeld is een prachtig
klankspel, waarin vooral de combinatie piano – klokkenspel opvalt,
vooral als we dit afzetten tegen de klankwolken van de strijkers. Over
het titelstuk laat ik Verlaak graag zelf aan het woord (in het
interview op de website): “I started questioning the nature of the
musical score in general, and asked myself the question, what if the
notes on the score aren’t the pitches musicians should play to hear the
music, but the pitches that make them stop playing the music? The
“music” is variations on Greensleeves pre-recorded by each instrument
in the ensemble…As a result there are two sounding layers, the
pre-recorded music (layer 1), which is started or stopped by a computer
programme and controlled by the pitches the musicians choose to play
(layer 2)”. Als derde eensemblestuk klinkt ‘Song and Dance’ dat reeds
eerder op deze blog voorbij kwam, aangezien het klonk tijdens het
Gaudeamusfestival van 2017.Naast drie ensemblestukken bevat het album twee solostukken, speciaal geschreven voor deze solisten van het ensemble: ‘Formation de Sarah’ wordt uitgevoerd door violiste Sarah Saviet, ‘Formation de Mark’ door pianist Mark Knoop. Het zijn beide vrij complexe stukken waarin de uitvoerder zowel wordt geleid door een partituur als door een computer die tijdens de uitvoering nadere instructies geeft.
Ben Taffijn - Nieuwe Noten
https://www.nieuwenoten.nl/?p=10521
24 November 2020
CD: All English Music is Greensleeves - Apartment House, Released by Another Timbre
In
de compositiestijl van Maya Verlaak (Gent, 1990) staat het spelelement
centraal. Via haar werk vraagt zij expliciet om verwondering van de
uitvoerders en het publiek. Op haar jongste CD “All English Music is
Greensleeves” laat zij haar associatieve vermogens de vrije loop.In het toch al afwisselende landschap van hedendaagse componisten is Verlaak een geval apart. Het titelstuk (2014, rev. 2019) refereert voortdurend aan de gelijknamige Engelse evergreen, waaruit in allerlei vormen wordt geciteerd. Het thema wordt uit elkaar gehaald, in een andere volgorde opnieuw gemonteerd, sommige delen worden weggelaten om later weer op te duiken, de ritmen worden door elkaar geschud en van een strik voorzien, motiefjes worden naar voren en achteren geschoven, soms lijkt een canon boven te drijven. Maar ondanks het klutsen en roeren blijft Greensleeves overeind. Dat is de kracht van Verlaaks aanpak. Zij neemt vaak afstand van haar compositorisch onderwerp zodat ruimte voor reflectie ontstaat. Zij kiest voor een positie als buitenstaander. Maar omdat haar partituren niet persé hoeven te worden opgevat als gebetonneerde instructies, is het resultaat meestal exotisch en verrassend, met hier een daar een vleugje humor.
Speeldoosje
Zij probeert met minimale referenties een maximaal resultaat te behalen. Dat blijkt uit het openingsstuk Lark (2014, rev. 2019) waarin het klokkenspel wordt ingezet als imitatie van het speeldoosje uit haar kindertijd. Referenties aan het Franse kinderliedje Alouette vervolmaken een toonspraak van onbezorgdheid en appeltaart. Het stuk is gebaseerd op ingehouden unisono klanken, afgewisseld met vlinderachtige gebroken akkoorden. Hoorn en klarinet staan in voor de stabiliteit en de warmte van een thuis, het klokkenspel met de piano en de viool zorgen voor avontuur en plezier.
In Song and Dance (2017) kiest Verlaak voor een haar typerend compositorisch proces — het spel. De musici beschikken niet over een uitgewerkte partituur maar moeten het doen met een analyse en een paar spelregels over o.a. de dynamiek, de openingsnoot, mogelijke intervallen en de volgorde waarin de musici op elkaar reageren. Het resultaat van dit spel is een gracieus weefsel van tonen die overgenomen en afgestoten worden. Twee percussionisten (schuurpapier) staan in voor de stabiliteit. Het komt over als een vraag- en antwoordspel waarbij het antwoord minder ter zake doet.
De CD wordt gecompleteerd met twee korte experimentele solostukken waarin de muzikant steeds wordt gecorrigeerd door een computer. Formation de Sarah (Sarah Saviet, viool) en Formation de Mark (Mark Knoop, piano) verleiden de uitvoerenden met reacties op voortdurend veranderend muzikaal materiaal. Ook hier komt het spelelement op de eerste plaats. Bij Maya Verlaak gaat het immers om het spel, niet om de knikkers.
Wynold Verweij - Klassiek Centraal
https://klassiek-centraal.be/recencies/speelse-associaties-op-nieuwe-cd-van-maya-verlaak/
13 November 2020
Cassette: Tape Piece - released by Birmingham Record Company
Not
sure how many times I’ll listen to this, and you’re fucked if you stick
it on at a party, but I can get behind this absurdist performance art
piece. The ‘album’ is 12 separate recordings of verlaak and Ingamells
wrapping rolls of tape around each other then frantically trying to
break free — with their panting breath and rubber sole squeaks the only
respite from the harsh tape sound. They’re multi-instrumentalists too — using Poundland Gaffer Tape, WH Smith Clear Tape and Eurogiant Masking Tape, among other sticky delights. Weirdly addictive!
Conor McCaffrey - All the right noises
https://mookidmusic.com/2020/11/13/all-the-right-noises-october-2020/
3 November 2020
Cassette: Tape Piece - released by Birmingham Record Company
For
the 17'52" duration of Tape Piece Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells can
be heard wrapping rolls of sticky tape around each other's clothed
bodies and then, when all the tape has been used and after a brief
pause, struggling to break free. The audio residue of their hectic
physical entanglement is at once a blatant absurdity and a comic tour
de force; a pun translated into slapstick action preserved on cassette,
the action taped and the pun made literal. Broadly in the ebullient
spirit of Fluxus, the couple's tussle has itw osn obscure rhythms and
binding, grappling, streching and ripping, its own clenched, involuted
language of squeaks, tears and tugs, grunts, gasps and pauses for
breath. Absurd, and curiously life-enhancing.The Wire
28 October 2020
Cassette: Tape Piece - released by Birmingham Record Company
From
music jammed with notes, we pass to Tape Piece: music that is
note-free, if it is music at all. The sounds heard derive from Maya
Verlaak and Andy Ingamells wrapping their intertwined bodies with rolls
of household tape (cue squeaky rips), pausing a moment (audible
panting), then struggling to break free (crackle, pops, further
squeaks).I especially enjoyed the bass-register tones of Poundland gaffer tape, applied in track nine. YouTube videos usefully document the couple’s live act, but sonic purists and all who live with their ears wide open may relish this 17-minute compilation, available as a download or, appropriately, on an old-fashioned cassette tape.
Geoff Brown - The Times
21 October 2019
Het eerste gebod voor de bezoeker van Transit zegt dat je je oren wijd open moet zetten om de taal van al die stemmen zo goed mogelijk te verstaan. Maar dat was soms makkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. Als je na concert nummer vier bijvoorbeeld plots geconfronteerd werd met een ingewikkeld klankspel tussen een groepje musici en een computer. Het zag er zeker leuk uit voor Ensemble Interface, waarvoor Maya Verlaak het conceptuele stuk schreef. Maar voor de luisteraar, die verwoed probeerde te volgen wat er aan de hand was, was er in het stuk misschien te weinig plaats.
De Standaard, Newspaper, BE
30 June 2019
Strandzand in de piano
Slim op de gelegenheid toegesneden: de inzending van Maya Verlaak. In Sanding legde de Gentse componist een herhalende pianoriedel het zwijgen op door in eigen persoon potten strandzand in het hamermechaniek te kiepen.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/06/30/piano-in-de-golven-bij-dag-in-de-branding-op-haagse-zuiderstrand-a3965587
18 April 2019
Maya Verlaak’s highly conceptual Evidence-based (2018) asked the performers to reconstruct a pre-composed piece for harpsichord that had been deleted. From various pieces of ‘evidence’, including a written analysis and a melody derived from the ‘natural harmonics’ of the original piece, the performers attempted to regenerate the work. Retro Disco’s examination of the evidence led them in a very 1980s video game direction with the three performers using hand-held controllers to manipulate live electronics while walking constantly around the stage. The piece did seem to be genuinely ‘fun’, and it would be interesting to compare the results of this puzzle with other ensembles’ interpretations to see how close or far apart the musical results happen to be.
https://journalofmusic.com/criticism/adventures-new-music-fringe-0
July 2018
But Tape Piece (2012) by Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells achieved something meaningful for both ears and eyes as these two composers rolled around the floor, ripping sellotape off each other’s (clothed) bodies. The falsetto squeals of the sellotape launched fragmentary melodies into the air. This piece was witty and fun.
https://frieze.com/article/searching-new-intimacy-london-contemporary-music-festival
December 2017
Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells’ Tape Piece – which requires performers to wrap themselves up in sellotape and then extricate themselves – also proved something of a hit. Full disclosure: I had performed this piece with Jack Sheen in Manchester a few weeks earlier; on that occasion it had been a kind of awkward if affectionate fumble. Here it was slicker, sexier, more professional even, though maybe less cute.
Tempo, Volume 72, Issue 285, Cambridge University Press, UK
September 2017
De Gentse Maya Verlaak bewandelt een andere weg. In ‘SONG & DANCE: An excessively elaborate effort to explain or justify’ staat de analyse van een hedendaags muziekstuk centraal. Als uitgangspunt nam ze een ouder stuk dat ze grondig analyseerde en verwerkte tot een soort van spelsimulatie die weer voor de diverse groepen in het ensemble: strijkers, blazers, slagwerkers en piano als basismateriaal geldt. Het levert een harmonieuze compositie op met een zeker hallucinerend effect. Opvallend is het geluid dat de slagwerkers produceren en dat bestaat uit het met houtblokjes wrijven over diverse soorten schuurpapier.
http://www.nieuwenoten.nl/?p=4012
July 2017
In Maya Verlaak’s KlangfarbenTanz, it takes the form of an interactive sculpture that is physically altered by a flautist’s sound. In each case, the model of the score as a transcription of, or set of instructions for, the ‘work’ has been abandoned in favour of a concept of the score as a dynamic object that is—perhaps—more of a facet of the performance of the piece than a lasting trace of the compositional process. Taken together, the pieces presented are a statement of a number of possible positions from which the ‘work’ of music might be viewed in the present day, and offer a discussion of the relationship of the work of composition and performance with the ‘work’ of music.
http://musicandphilosophy.ac.uk/events/mpsg2017/asc2017maap/
February 2017
Next came Andy Ingamells and Maya Verlaak's Tape Piece performed by Edward Henderson and Andy Ingamells. When described Tape Piece sounds rather idiotic, the two men wrestled with each other and wrapped themselves in Sellotape, and then ripped it off each other again. But the sounds thus created were striking and rather wonderful.
http://www.planethugill.com/2017/02/new-teeth4-bastard-assignments.html
November 2016
While Andy Ingamells’ and Maya Verlaak’s Tape Piece suggested a fully-developed electronic work for magnetic tape, Kohl and Maryhew approached each other armed with rolls of Scotch tape. The two proceeded to wrap each other into what looked like a very uncomfortable hug until each roll had been depleted. Then they began to snap the tape as they unraveled themselves. Then — Kohl and Maryhew repeated the process, first with masking tape, then with duct tape. While sonically similar, the different strengths of the adhesives provided a gratifying result — and wads of used tape on the Bop Stop floor.
https://clevelandclassical.com/ensemble-pamplemousse-mocrep-at-the-bop-stop-nov-6/
June 2016
Upper-gallery trumpets here had also figured in a neat little opener, Carrier, by Belgian post-grad student Maya Verlaak, a three-minute fanfare based on acronyms of ACBH, as blazing as anything by Janacek, and tautly delivered under Christopher Houlding. Nobody wanted to leave at the end of this very special concert.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/review-adrian-boult-hall-closing-11530199
September 2015
De Vlaamse Maya Verlaak trok de aandacht met een stuk voor spijkerviool. Ze had deze term letterlijk genomen en vier spijkers op een plankje getimmerd, die met een strijkstok worden aangestreken. De zo gegenereerde (boven)tonen hadden een etherische, haast engelachtige klankschoonheid, maar Verlaak kan nog veel winnen door ook melodische ontwikkeling in te bouwen.
https://cultureelpersbureau.nl/2015/09/alexander-khubeev-wint-gaudeamus-award-2015/?highlight=Verlaak
September 2014
De opener was een ironisch werk van de Vlaamse Maya Verlaak, All Dutch music is Andriessen. De titel, die helaas niet zo ver bezijden de waarheid is, werd ingevuld door Volharding-achtige muziek, afgewisseld door tonale, haast Mozartiaanse fragmenten. De uitvoering was jammer genoeg wat onvast.
https://www.musiqolog.nl/?p=159