To spend time with Lisa Illean’s music is to feed the quiet parts of your soul. She’s one of those composers who can open up a space with just a few notes, her sensitive music entices us to pay careful attention to the sounds she chooses. As an experience, it’s somehow like stepping into a minimalist art gallery, as the sole viewer, walking around and pausing to observe every part of an artwork, letting each look reveal something new. The familiar feels unfamiliar and vice versa.

Enough generalities. This beautifully played album, featuring both Australian and British musicians, showcases works spanning eight years. It begins with arcing, stilling, bending, gathering, four movements for 13 musicians that explore the layering of sound, shifting from piano droplets to elusive rumblings. Tiding II begins with a background hum, opening a portal into the music’s world. As we wander in this lost landscape, sounds emerge against the backdrop: punctuated by percussion, anchored by the piano, haunted by the saxophone. 

A Through-Grown Earth, setting words from three poems filled with the natural world by Gerald...