Sebastian Adams and Darragh Kearns-Hayes awarded Young Composers’ Bursary

Two young Irish composers have been awarded the second IMRO/RTÉ lyric fm young composers bursary, the past recipients of which include Enda Bates and Sean Clancy. The bursary gives the composers an opportunity to write a short work for the National Symphony Orchestra, under the mentorship of RTÉ composer-in-residence Linda Buckley and through a process of workshops with the NSO Principal Musicians and conductor Gavin Maloney. The final outcome will be pieces of 5–8 minutes which will be recorded and broadcast on lyric fm’s contemporary music show, Nova, presented by Bernard Clarke.

Sebastian Adams is a student at the RIAM’s composition programme as well as being founder/director of and violist with the Academy’s student-led contemporary music ensemble Kirkos. He has also studied with Karlheinz Essl in Vienna, and was the youngest ever finalist in the Sorodha International Composition Competition last year. Performers of his work include Crash Ensemble, Robinson Panorama Quartet, William Dowdall, Kate Ellis, Cora Venus Lunny, Andrew Zolinsky  and many others.

Darragh Kearns-Hayes is a Cork-based composer, currently studying with C.S.L Parker and Alan Cutts at the Cork School of Music. Earlier this year he took part in the West Cork Chamber Music/CMC string quartet-writing workshop. His composition is informed by his involvment in many genres of music; he is one half of electronic duo Fear Stalks the Land! and creates traditional.electronic fusion under the name of Dirishkh.

Darragh spoke about receiving the award: “It’s a real honour to be awarded the bursary to compose for the RTÉ NSO! To get to work with such talented professionals will be a privilege and knowing that I will have the support of Linda during the compositional process and Gavin during the workshop is very comforting. The piece I’m intending to write is entitled When We’re Both Cats and is about a romance only possible in another life when both parties are of the feline persuasion. I’m looking forward to getting to work on my piece and exploring the wide range of possibilities that the Symphony Orchestra will provide.”

Ciaran Farrell’s Sprit of the Sea in June

An upcoming sea-themed programme with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra will include a work Irish composer Ciaran Farrell, who recently released an album of guitar works with guitarist Damien Kelly. The work, premiered in 2009, is called Spirit of the Sea, and will appear alongside Mendelssohn’s Hebrides’ Overture, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Zimmer’s Pirates of the Caribbean.

From the composer: Spirit of the Sea was commissioned by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra for it’s 2009 Summer Lunch Time Concert Series and was first premiered at the NCH in September of that year. It was subsequently broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm’s In Tempo programme presented by Paul Herriot. The piece itself is a buoyant, uplifting work that takes the listener on an imaginary sea journey through both calm and stormy seas. It is Ciarán’s second orchestral work that puts the listener in an oceanic setting. His eight movement setting of poet Paddy Bushe’s Hopkins on Skellig Michael which premiered on Christmas Day 2004 on RTÉ lyric fm as a Christmas Special depicts an imaginary Gerard Manly Hopkins’s search for enlightenment on the rugged monastic Island that is Skellig Michael.

The concert takes place on 18 June at the National Concert Hall, and will be broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm’s Daytime Classics.

CMC launches a new promotional CD and series on 20 June

The first release in CMC’s new promotional CD series new music::new Ireland will be launched at 4.30pm on 20 June at the National Concert Hall by RTÉ lyric fm presenter Bernard Clarke, following CMC’s Future of Music in the Digital World 2 conference.

The series, new music::new Ireland, aims to showcase some of the current work of Irish composers. Like CMC’s previous CD series, Contemporary Music from Ireland, new music::new Ireland inherits the range and generational representation of the earlier series, taking the listener on a journey into the vibrant world of new Irish music.

Funded by Culture Ireland, the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the release presents 11 works selected by an artistic panel from over 45 submissions in a smart new design and layout. Featured composers include Linda Buckley, Seán Clancy, Roger Doyle, Stephen Gardner, Dave Flynn, Daniel Jacobson, Deirdre McKay, Karen Power, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, Eric Sweeney, and Ian Wilson.

The launch will feature a live performance by traditional Irish flautist Harry Bradley of an extract from one of the featured works on the CD, Dave Flynn’s The Forest of Ornaments.

Following the launch, the CD will be distributed nationally and internationally to radio stations, festivals, concert promoters, performers and universities amongst other places. A digital-only mini series, featuring works by four other composers drawn from the submissions, will also be released in the Autumn.

Contemporary music events for love:live music day

Ireland’s National Music Day, love:live music, takes place on Friday 21 June, with free-admission music events being held across the country. Here is a selection of the contemporary music events taking place as part of the day.

• CMC, AOIC and the National Chamber Choir present a concert of Irish choral music, Choirland – venue TBC, 11.30am
• Soprano Elizabeth Hilliard performs an afternoon concert of music for voice and electronics by Gráinne Mulvey – CFCP Dublin, 1.15 – 2pm
• George Higgs‘ The Acoustic Battery Co. will present a concert of homemade instruments at Christ Church – grounds of Christ Church, 5.30 – 6pm
• Also at Christ Church is a collaborative performance by Cathedral Assistant organist David Bremner, and uileann piper Mark Redmond – Christ Church, 6.30 – 7pm
• Fractal present Interactions, with performances of Baroque and contemporary guitar music by Philip Lawson, electronic music by Anna Murray, and audiovisual pieces – TBC

A new collaboration involving composer David Bremner will be performed on 21 June

David Bremner

As part of National Music Day at Christ Church Cathedral, contemporary music company Béal presents a half-hour set entitled L’Air du Temps/The Spirit of the Times, the fruit of a year-long collaboration between the Cathedral’s Assistant Organist, David Bremner, and uilleann-piper Mark Redmond.

Funded by the Arts Council Deis Award, the project is about the connections between the performance styles from two very distinct traditions: traditional Irish slow airs as played on the pipes, and the music of the French Baroque era on the organ. These will be explored in the wonderfully resonant space of the Cathedral, allowing the sounds of these instruments to intertwine.

The set includes a mixture of traditional Irish airs, organ music by Couperin and de Grigny, as well as arrangements and compositions by Bremner. It is described as ‘an atmospheric re-imagining of Eighteenth century Ireland and France, a time of upheaval and revolutionary ferment, and a fertile time of cross-influences’.

The performance takes place at 6.30pm on 21 June 2013 in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. Admission is free.

Irish Composers perform in Strings and Drones

Though the Irish Composers’ Collective is known for its 60-strong complement of composers of new music, the wealth of performing talent in that membership is often overlooked. Within those 60 members are musicians that work – whether regularly or just occasionally – as soloists and chamber musicians, jazz improvisers and band members and electronic experimenters. This month’s concert takes a break from the 2013 Solo Series to explore some aspects of this bank of performers, with a night of improvised music.

Called Strings and Drones, the concert will feature mainly improvised music performed by ICC member composers on an array of instruments and electronics. Solo viola, violin and piano will be placed beside processed guitars, vocal drones and electronics, while Galen MacCába’s experimental Water Music will see some of the audience get involved too. In Rachel Ní Chuinn’s Walking Space, members of Dublin’s Sacred Harp Singing group will lead a walking vocal drone in which shifting circular movement patterns create shifting relationships between notes. Ben McHugh’s DDI is an improvised noise piece created from a guitar feedback loop, which Anna Murray‘s Rndr creates loops of randomly chosen samples. Sebastian Adams, director of and performer with the Kirkos ensemble, will improvise on viola using electronics controlled by a ‘big red button’. Not all works will be totally improvised: Breifne Holohan will perform his own semi-improvised arrangement of American composer Charlemagne Palestine’s One + Two + Three Fifths, and Éna Brennan will perform two of her own solo violin works.

Strings and Drones takes place at the Kevin Barry Room of the National Concert Hall on Wednesday 19 June at 8.30pm. For more information see www.irishcomposerscollective.com, and tickets, costing €10/€5 concession, are available from the NCH box office at www.nch.ie or 01 4170000.

Frank Lyons’ ‘The River Still Sings’ performed in London and Derry

The Fidelio Trio will premiere a new work by Derry-based composer Frank Lyons at a concert as part of the City of London Festival.

Commissioned by the Festival with the Walled City Music Festival (part of the Derry-Londonderry City of Culture 2013) to celebrate the 400th anniversary of link between the two cities, Lyons’ new work is called The River Still Sings. The piece is a multimedia project that features text by Derry writer Seamus Deane (also specially commissioned), narration by actor James Nesbitt, sound design and visuals by Paul Moore and a score to be performed by the Fidelio Trio.

The theme of the piece is rivers and walls, exploring their ‘divisive yet healing potential’, a theme that is close to the heart of London and Derry/Londonderry, both of which are walled cities situated on rivers. This is not the first work to explore the importance of rivers to the composer’s native city: in a precursor work The River Sings, Lyons and Moore (with Greg O’Hanlon and Brian Bridges) created an interactive sound installation based around the River Foyle, using data derived from it, as well as sound to allow it to ‘sing its story’. The new work juxtaposes this historical context with images and technologies of the present, including a 3-D rendering and projection of the narrator in performance.

Also on the programme is Nigel Osborne’s The Piano Tuner Trio and Ravel’s Piano Trio. The concert takes place at LSO St Luke’s on 28 June, followed by its Irish premiere in Derry on 21 July.

NCC perform works by Siobhán Cleary and Martin O’Leary in Dún Laoghaire

The National Chamber Choir of Ireland, under the direction of Paul Hillier and with Fergal Caulfield on organ, will take part in Dún Laoghaire’s Summer Organ Concerts with a programme called Love and Other Nonsense. The Series, founded by Professor Gerard Gillen, is now in its fortieth year, and is one of the longest-running concert series in the country.

In this concert, the NCC will juxtapose themes of love with nonsense lyrics, in a programme of predominantly 20th-century music described by Culture Northern Ireland as ‘a wonderfully stimulating and imaginative programme’. Two settings of Sir Frederick Bridge’s The Cries of London, the first by Orlando Gibbons and the second by Luciano Berio, settings of Bergman’s Galgenlieder and a recent work by Siobhán Cleary, Theophilus Thistle and the Myth of Miss Muffet, are all derived from nonsense texts. Louis Andriessen’s Un beau baiser, Clément Janequin’s Le Chant des Oiseaux and Pēteris Vasks’ Encounter explore aspects of love. In addition, a new Jubilate by Martin O’Leary, commissioned to celebrate the summer series’ anniversary, will be premiered at the concert.

Love and Other Nonsense  will be performed at St. Michael’s Church in Dún Laoghaire on 23 June at 8pm. For more information see www.nationalchamberchoir.com

Programme:

Orlando Gibbons: The Cries of London

Luciano Berio: The Cries of London (I-V)

Jehan Alain: Variations sur un thème de Clément Janequin, JA118

Clément Janequin: Le Chant des Oiseaux

Louis Andriessen: Un beau baiser

Pēteris Vasks: Encounter

Martin O’Leary: Jubilate (premiere)

Erik Bergman: Galgenlieder

Louis Vierne: From Pièces de Fantaisie, op.54 – Carillon de Westminster, op.54, no.6

Siobhan Cleary: Theophilus Thistle and the Myth of Miss Muffet

New Music Digest: 10 – 16 June

 

Events this Week

The Hilltown New Music Festival will be launched this week with an event at CMC with performances from Elizabeth Hilliard, Anthony Kelly and David Stalling (with members of the Dublin Laptop Orchestra)

• 13 June, 6pm, Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin
• More

The Irish Film Institute and Fractal present Synthesis, an audiovisual screening event with works by Irish composers and artists.

• 11 June, 6.30pm, Irish Film Institute, Temple Bar, Dublin
• More

Percussionist Alex Petcu will be joined by guest musicians, including Sam Perkins, Kate Ellis and Aoife Donovan for a recital of music by Cork-based composers

• 10 June, 8pm, CIT Cork School of Music
• More

The Calary Concert Series in Wicklow features singer Deirdre Moynihan and guitarist Alec O’Leary in a performance of works from Rodrigo, Albeniz, Koshkin, and Ian Wilson’s fola is uisce.

• 13 June, 8pm, Calary Church, Co Wicklow
• More

Watch

Silk Chroma, with music by Linda Buckley and visuals by Maura McDonnell, which will be screened in three parts at Synthesis.

A new trio by John Buckley is premiered on 9 June in Dublin

To Lands Beyond Time for flute, viola and harp was written for Triocca, who will premiere the work at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery on 9 June as part of the Sunday’s at Noon series.

John Buckley describes the work:

‘To Lands Beyond Time draws its title, inspiration and imagery from a series of haiku poems. The themes are drawn from the natural world, the passage of time as well as timelessness, the futility of battle, the desire for freedom and the sense of loneliness or aloneness brought on by Autumn dusk. Much of the music was written over the winter months, when the sight and sounds of wild geese flying over the house from their nearby winter nesting site on the North Bull Island, were a daily occurrence.’

Irish-based Triocca (Ríona Ó Duinnín, flute, Nancy Johnson, viola and Geraldine O’Doherty, harp) was formed in 2003 and have performed throughout Ireland and abroad. They have premiered works by a number of Irish composers, including James Wilson, Philip Martin, Eric Sweeney, and Linda Buckley, amongst others. Their debut CD is available from the RTÉ lyric fm label.

The concert on 9 June also includes works by Arnold Bax and Maurice Ravel.