Lines and Tracings documents the unique meeting of American experimentalist Michael Pisaro and Boston-based composer-performer Morgan Evans-Weiler, realized with the forward-thinking ensemble Ordinary Affects. Through two expansive works, the album melds field recording, slow-motion counterpoint, and Wandelweiser-influenced reduction, opening vast temporal landscapes for the listener. Pisaro’s composition foregrounds resonance and contingency, using glacially-paced lines and occasional electronics to anchor events in sound and space. Each musician - Evans-Weiler on violin, Katie Porter on bass clarinet, Laura Cetilia on cello, and others - negotiates between notated constraints and open choices, letting harmonic events emerge, recede, and reappear in subtly shifting constellations.

Evans-Weiler’s own piece expands this world of patient listening, using harpsichord, piano, and a network of strings and winds to elaborate textural fields. Phrases are played freely, durations unconstrained except for a minimum length, resulting in organic shapes and a disarming naturalism. Rather than pursue overt drama or gesture, the ensemble traces evolving boundaries between presence and absence, their sound occasionally dissolving into the surrounding silence. Electronic and acoustic elements blur comfortably, granting each player room for nuance and deep attention.

Throughout the recording, Lines and Tracings offers a study in attentive restraint and understated beauty. Each movement rewards those who linger, revealing micro-interactions of timbre, soft transformations, and the interplay of intention and contingency. This collaboration stands as testament to Pisaro and Evans-Weiler’s commitment to sound as both structure and possibility, arising from and dissolving into silence in ever-unfolding cycles.