Eric Wubbels - Altarpiece H. af K. (2026) [Hi-Res]

Composer and pianist Eric Wubbels, co-director of New York’s Wet Ink Ensemble and winner of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize, releases the album Altarpiece H. af K. on Kou Records. It was inspired by Hilma af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple, monumental canvases made for a temple that did not exist and addressed to a listener of the future. He saw them at the Guggenheim in 2018, and the piece took seven years to come fully together. It began with a pandemic-era email to bassoonist Dana Jessen proposing overlaid multiphonics, perhaps in the form of a canon. Live performances followed at Fairchild Chapel, Elastic Arts and a church in Atlanta. The recording took place in December 2025 at Power Station Studios in Manhattan, where Like a Virgin and Let’s Dance were made.

The piece is written for three bassoons, played by Dana Jessen, Ben Roidl-Ward and Katherine Young. The sound is entirely acoustic, with no electronics or live processing. The composer uses multiphonics and microtonal shifts so that overtones, difference tones and beating frequencies grow into dense, vibrating spectra. The music sits between the spectral world of Scelsi and Dumitrescu and the heavy physical mass of Sunn O))). Its two long movements (Reh. A and Reh. C) hover between stasis and propulsion, at the threshold between pitch and noise. They arrive not at resolution but at transformation through the listener’s sustained attention. The album was recorded, mixed and produced by Randall Dunn, with mastering and Dolby Atmos mixes by Ben Greenberg.

Tracklist:
01-01 Eric Wubbels - Reh. A [14:59]
01-02 Eric Wubbels - Reh. C [14:15]