Paper Braids by Danya Pilchen & Kali Ensemble
Paper Braids is an upcoming album which is a collaborative work of Kali Ensemble from Hague and an Ukrainian composer Danya Pilchen.
A great work which makes you ponder on how the musical practice and composition can exist in specific spaces and specific conditions that have unique acoustic features and help to emphasize certain aspects of compositional energy used by the person who created the compositions to the wider extent of the space used by the ensemble.
When it comes to musical geography – it would be fair to say that the material released by Moving Furniture has different aspects of modern composition and minimalism but also other elements.
But the main actress, the main protagonist of this album is the live interaction between musicians and their instruments. A certain form of synchronicity and guided commotion that livens up the composition wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the awareness that the musicians have – their conscious move towards working together and encapsulating it into one unit.
It has worked beautifully and proved the point of how diverse can the musical conversation be.
Paper Braids came out of a long collaboration between me and the wonderful musicians of the Kali Ensemble. Through a series of workshops, residencies, and performances over the course of four years, we built up a collective practice focused on three topics: listening as the basis of musical interaction, awareness of how sound interacts with the performance space, and using that spatial awareness as a basis for both the duration of individual sounds and the temporal unfolding of an entire piece.
All three focal points of our practice are represented in this piece. Paper Braids is tailored specifically to the acoustics of the Orgelpark hall and the tuning and timbral specificities of the four organs I used: Utopa and Sauer controlled algorithmically via the Hyperorgan console, the romantic Verschueren, and the meantone Van Straten organ. At the same time, the speakers and microphones are placed at four different spots in the hall to induce acoustic feedback in response to the organ sound.
The idea of feedback is a core structural principle of the piece: not only is acoustic feedback responding to the sounds of the organs, but so is the listening of the musicians to the sound in space is guiding their performance: their scores look like ‘maps’ of the sounds in space, and they orient and build their own trajectories based on the sounds they hear. Simultaneously, the algorithm controlling the Hyperorgan reacts to certain sounds as they occur in the space, triggering different events on the organs in turn.
-- Danya Pilchen, November 2025
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ABOUT DANYA PILCHEN
Danya Pilchen is a Ukrainian composer based in The Hague. The human experience of time and music’s ability to illuminate it are the core concerns of his practice. His work explores the concept of ‘collective experience’ of time, challenging the individuality of time perception and creating shared, immersive moments.
Understanding time as shaped by human perception affected by social interactions necessitates increased attention to the relationships between musicians and audiences in Danya’s pieces. To facilitate these interactions, he employs various compositional strategies and listening techniques that engage the materiality of sound.
His work has been presented at venues and festivals in the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, the UK, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Switzerland, and other countries. His music has been performed by such ensembles as Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (Russia), Ensemble Temporum (Norway), Kirkos (Ireland), and Residentie Orkest (The Netherlands). He worked with such musicians as Anne LaBerge, Germaine Sijstermans, Antoine Beuger, Koen Nutters, Ere Lievonen, and Steven Vinkenoog, among others. His longest collaboration to date is with the young The Haguebased Kali Ensemble, for whom he wrote six pieces over the last four years. His scores are published by Donemus, and his recordings were previously published by Wandelweiser Records.
ABOUT KALI ENSEMBLE
Kali is a contemporary music collective based in The Hague. Kali’s artistic vision is to provide a platform for new music in which musicians, composers, and interdisciplinary artists are able to engage in active collaborations, to create space for developing collective practices, to research alternative perspectives of sound, and to contribute to the contemporary music field in a sustainable way.
Kali Ensemble has produced, premiered, and performed a variety of works in The Hague at Studio LOOS, Korzo, and Amare; at het Orgelpark, and Splendor in Amsterdam; Robert Schumann Hochschule, Düsseldorf; and at Humboldt University, and KM28, in Berlin.
credits
releases March 27, 2026
Composed by Danya Pilchen
Performed by Kali Ensemble
Nirantar Yakthumba: organ, coding
Joel Gester Suárez: organ
Gregor Connelly: live electronics
Live sound engineering by Clare Gallagher
Recorded by Bert van Dijk, June 5, 2025, Orgelpark, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Mastered by Bert van Dijk.
Photos by Yinquan Chen
Design by Rutger Zuydervelt
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