Stitch in Air is music for piano and elec­tron­ics, the start­ing point for a solo release which will come out May 3 2024. It was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lulu Cuyvers for AMOK 2022 and the music will be pre­miered dur­ing Bachacademie 2024 in Concertgebouw Brugge.

The request to build a per­for­mance around crafts­man­ship in Bruges came as a sur­prise at first but the link with lace soon turned out to be very log­i­cal.
After sev­er­al years of main­ly com­pos­ing, Heleen Van Haegenborgh returned for this per­for­mance to her instru­ment, the piano. To respond to the con­cept of craft­man­ship, she pre­pared the piano with nylon threads. The link between thread and lace is appar­ent.
Collaborating with visu­al artist Lulu Cuyvers turned out to be an obvi­ous choice, as lace has a spe­cial impor­tance in her work.
The ephemer­al char­ac­ter, the repet­i­tive­ness, the motifs, the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the patience, the pat­terns, pro­vide many inter­faces between sound and image.
For this per­for­mance Heleen Van Haegenborgh was assist­ed with an extra pair of hand by her daugh­ter Edith. 

Credits

• Composition
  Heleen Van Haegenborgh
• Scenography
  Lulu Cuyvers
• Instrumentation
  Pf & Elec
• Performers
  Heleen Van Haegenborgh and Edith Ghilbert
• Length
  30’
• Première
  October 2, 2022 at KAAP/AMOK (curated by Liesa Van de Aa)
• Label
  De Werf Records