Jacaszek

Idylla is the third of part of a trilogy of nature-based recordings that Polish composer Michał Jacaszek has recorded for Touch. The first, Catalogue des Arbres (Touch TO:94), was a collaboration with Kwartludium that celebrated the earlier inspiration of French composer Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue des Oiseaux (1958). Gardenia (Touch TO:117) was a response to a field recording workshop organised by Francisco Lopez in Limpopo province in South Africa, on the border with Botswana, the participants living in a subtropical nature reserve in the middle of nowhere.

Idylla takes Jacaszek's unique approach to field recording a step further. Faced with the spectre of AI and the progressive blur between digital simulation and the natural world, Jacaszek has made a series of source recordings and then used MIDI technology to isolate key sounds before scoring them for classical instruments and the vocal treatments performed by the 441Hz Choir from Gdańsk, under the direction of Anna Borkowicz.

It is said that there is nothing new under the sun. Here is a collection of recordings that are poised between a lamentation for a disappearing world and a joyous reflection upon the beauty of being sat by a river, listening to birdsong amidst the movement of trees in a soft wind. Idylla consolidates Jacaszek's work as being amongst the most essential of any contemporary composer, its symphonic quality matched by its beauty and detail above and beneath.