Available for preorder, the Danish composer transforms centuries of “fountain music” into something fluid, modern, and alive.

Commissioned in the sixteenth century by Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, the gardens of Villa d’Este in Tivoli, in Italy’s Lazio region, were conceived as both display and refuge — a vision of paradise shaped by engineering. Spread across a steep hillside, the grounds unfold in terraces linked by stairways, fountains, and pools, their design governed by the natural pressure of spring water rather than machinery. Stone balustrades and cypress groves frame a network of channels and hidden pipes that animate the landscape. The result is a place where architecture and hydraulics blur, and where water, guided by gravity and ingenuity, seems to perform its own kind of music.

For centuries, those fountains have drawn artists attuned to motion and sound. Franz Liszt captured their shimmer in Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este; Maurice Ravel later echoed that spirit in his own Jeux d’eau, turning water into rhythm and light. L.A. filmmaker Kenneth Anger shot his hallucinatory Eaux d’artifice (below) among Tivoli’s terraces, transforming the garden into cinematic fantasy. Now composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard, working with the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir, extends that lineage. Their Jeux d’eau translates the garden’s flowing architecture into sound once more, but this time through breath, circuitry, and improvisation.

Meldgaard is a Danish composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work moves freely between composition and improvisation, from chamber music and orchestral collage to noise, electronics, and sound installations. A founding member of the Copenhagen label År & Dag, he first drew attention under the name Frisk Frugt, where folk forms met avant-garde invention. Jeux d’eau is a co-release between År & Dag and Conatala, the label arm of Tokyo’s Pianola Records, a shop revered for its deep shelves of Japanese ambient, minimal, and experimental music.

Run out of Shimokitazawa since 2020, Conatala extends Pianola’s curatorial vision into the world, issuing rare archival releases and new work united by a quiet sense of wonder. Its recent projects include the first vinyl edition of Pale Cocoon’s cassette-era Mayu and reissues by the Dead Goldfish Ensemble — records that, like Jeux d’eau, blur the boundaries of time and place in pursuit of something elusive and enduring.

At the center of Meldgaard’s Jeux d’eau is the New Ondomo, a Japanese reimagining of the early French electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot. Played by Meldgaard, it lends Jeux d’eau its distinctive voice: a tone that slides and shimmers, more sung than struck. Like the fountains that inspired it, the instrument’s sound resists containment, flowing between notes rather than fixing on them. The Ondomo’s liquid phrasing threads through the clarinet choir’s warm resonance, creating music that feels both ancient and newly electrified.

“Enter the Fray” moves with an odd, unhurried tension, its drip-like pulses scattered against slow, interweaving clarinet lines that rise and fall like fountains catching light. “Uncharted Streams” begins in abstraction before giving way to a murmuring drift of sound, as if the ensemble were tracing the edges of a pool. Both pieces reveal Meldgaard’s fascination with form in motion: structure dissolving into flow, rhythm giving way to something closer to weather than composition.

The recording itself is immaculate: crystal clear yet full of depth, each instrument suspended in air with almost architectural precision. Captured by Thomas Vang at The Village in Copenhagen, a studio known for its warm acoustics and precision recording of ensembles. August Wanngren’s mix and master preserve that transparency while adding quiet warmth, so the music seems to glow from within. It’s a recording that rewards close listening, inviting the ear to trace every ripple.

Jeux d’eau is available for preorder now in the shop. Retailers interested in carrying our distributed titles are encouraged to get in touch by emailing [email protected]