H documents the intersection of Japanese composer Taku Sugimoto and Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear, realized in an unassuming but luminous live performance. Originally written for Sugimoto’s duo project ‘Songs’ with Minami Saeki, the piece was rearranged for two guitars when Sugimoto and Alvear came together in Tokyo. The composition’s title signals its creator’s ongoing departure from elaborate naming conventions - only single letters, roman numerals, or numbers. For H, this stripped-down formalism mirrors an approach in which material is built from just a handful of melodic phrases, each underscored by the ringing clarity of guitar harmonics mapped in just intonation.

Sugimoto and Alvear move with understated finesse. The music’s repetitions are not mechanical; each phrase is delivered with subtle variation, allowing microtonal shadings and pauses to react to the room and the moment. No effort is made to disguise or embellish - there is a strong preference for transparency, for letting each gesture be only itself. The duo’s mutual respect and history (Alvear had previously interpreted Sugimoto’s music) lends the performance a sense of conversational trust. The result, recorded without artificial complexity, is a sonic space both quiet and radiant, where listeners sense not only the notes but the quiet that surrounds them.

H is a testament to the power of reduction and focus. What might on paper seem minimal - in terms of means and movement - expands on listening into a field of layers and ephemerality. Each performance is subtly different, each sonic fragment hovering between presence and absence. Sugimoto and Alvear’s collaboration affirms that in music, as in listening, transformation sometimes arises only through patience and attention to the smallest possible detail.