Born in Australia and now based in the UK, Lisa Illean composes ‘music that seeps into your consciousness’ (ABC Classic FM). Reflective and compelling, her ‘exquisitely quiet shadows’ (The Sydney Morning Herald) invite contemplation, often exploring unconventional tunings and the phenomena that arise through the interaction of quiet layers. Much of her work combines live and pre-recorded instrumental sound in performance to create ‘a soundscape unlike any other’ (Limelight). Her debut portrait album arcing, stilling, bending, gathering — described as ‘extraordinary stuff’ (The Arts Desk)— has been released on NMC recordings.
Listen to arcing, stilling, bending, gathering on Bandcamp or YouTube.
Illean has written widely across orchestral and chamber music, including An acre ringing, still — a ‘fascinating’ twenty-minute work for orchestra and electronics commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra — and Tiding for electric guitar.
She has maintained strong connections with her birth country, with commissions from Finding Our Voice/Ukaria Cultural Centre (arcing, stilling, bending, gathering) and Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Land’s End), as well as projects with Adelaide and Melbourne Symphony orchestras, and the Australian National Academy of Music. Her works have also been commissioned by Ensemble InterContemporain, Radio France’s Festival Présences, Donaueschinger Musiktage/Experimental Studio des SWR (Tiding II (silentium)), London Sinfonietta, Wigmore Hall and the BBC Proms.
In the U.K., she has worked closely with soprano Juliet Fraser (A through-grown earth – Excerpt I, Excerpt II), Explore Ensemble and GBSR Duo; as well as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia. Abroad her music has been presented at such events as Taiwan International Festival of the Arts, Tzlil Meudcan (Tel Aviv), Transit Festival (Leuven), November Music (S’Hertogenbosch), AnglicA Festival (Bologna) and Unerhörte Musik (Berlin).
In recent years she has oriented her practice as a composer to include making long-form pieces with both performed and pre-recorded material, in close development with one or two others. Her music is published by Faber Music.
‘Illean conjures an air of precarious beauty from her lightly woven fabric of filaments and intimations.’ (The Wire magazine)
‘To spend time with Lisa Illean’s music is to feed the quiet parts of your soul.’ (Limelight).
Album Reviews
Gramophone The Arts Desk bandcamp (best contemporary classical)
“To spend time with Lisa Illean’s music is to feed the quiet parts of your soul. She’s 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. The familiar feels unfamiliar and vice versa.
Enough generalities. This beautifully played album, featuring both Australian and British musicians, showcases works spanning eight years. It begins with arcing, stilling, bending, gathering, four movements for 13 musicians that explore the layering of sound, shifting from piano droplets to elusive rumblings. Tiding II begins with a background hum, opening a portal into the music’s world. As we wander in this lost landscape, sounds emerge against the backdrop: punctuated by percussion, anchored by the piano, haunted by the saxophone.A Through-Grown Earth, setting words from three poems filled with the natural world by Gerald Manley Hopkins, started life as a solo piece for soprano Juliet Fraser, before growing into this mesmerising work for live voice and pre-recorded sound. Harp, strings and zithers, with non-tempered and microtonal tunings, create a soundscape unlike any other.Land’s End, for chamber orchestra, takes its inspiration from a Latvian American visual artist whose abstract works are themselves inspired by ocean, desert and night sky. We are back in place where quiet and stillness rule, but which, paradoxically, feels loud with meaning, the music never content to settle.
It all adds up to a fascinating showcase, packaged with a cover featuring a wonderful etching by Rachel Duckhouse, To the Lizard.” (Rebecca Franks)