With High Carbon(October 2025, W.E.R.F. Records), Heleen Van Haegenborgh returns to her roots as a pianist.
In recent years, she has most­ly com­posed on com­mis­sion for a wide range of ensem­bles, from recorders to foghorns.
On this solo album, her entire jour­ney of musi­cal encoun­ters and com­po­si­tions sub­tly comes togeth­er. Van Haegenborgh doesn’t think in terms of sto­ries or box­es, but rather in colours, ener­gy, and tex­ture — with­out drift­ing into the abstract.

She remains true to her per­son­al inside piano world, includ­ing the use of wires she has been exper­i­ment­ing with since 2008. These are giv­en a place here as ful­ly-fledged musi­cal ele­ments, com­mu­ni­cat­ing on dif­fer­ent lev­els, in var­i­ous con­texts and forms. In a high­ly per­son­al set, she weaves piano, elec­tron­ics and her own sound tech­niques into a sub­tle, lay­ered world. Every sound, every nuance bears her sig­na­ture — from com­po­si­tion to performance.

The elec­tron­ics some­times become com­plete­ly one with the piano, but often fol­low an entire­ly dif­fer­ent path: at times calm, sub­tle and refined; at oth­er times ner­vous and under the sur­face. Always with­in spe­cif­ic atmos­pheres and with pre­cise tim­ing.
Van Haegenborgh took charge of every detail from start to fin­ish — elec­tron­ics, com­po­si­tion, and performance.

This solo project is a pow­er­ful state­ment from an artist rein­vent­ing her instru­ment, bring­ing togeth­er her tra­jec­to­ry as a com­pos­er, per­former and sound archi­tect into one intense lis­ten­ing experience. 

The orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al was cre­at­ed for AMOK 2022 and the music was pre­miered dur­ing Bachacademie 2024 in Concertgebouw Brugge, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with visu­al artist Lulu Cuyvers. 

Since then the music evolved a lot and the result can be heard on High Carbon. For one piece Heleen Van Haegenborgh is assist­ed with an extra pair of hand by her daugh­ter Edith. 

Listen

Credits

• Composition, electronics, premix, performance
  Heleen Van Haegenborgh
• Mix en recording
  Alex Fostier
• Mastering
  Frederic Alstadt
• Label
  W.E.R.F. Records, October 10th 2025
• Recorded at
  Concertgebouw Brugge
• Graphic design
  Serruys Verdoodt