Peter Moran

The 5th Contemporary Keyboard Weekend takes place from 3-5 February 2012 and features workshops led by composer Peter Moran, as well as a concert of piano music by Piers Hellawell, Alan Mills, and Ian Wilson.

The workshops and concert came about as a result of a visit to the Conservatoire Frederic Chopin, Paris in late 2011 by Peter Moran who, on the invitation of the Conservatoire, gave a series of workshops for piano students. Peter describes his experience so far and his plans for the upcoming weekend:

Last Autumn I was invited by the Frédéric Chopin Conservatoire in Paris to feature as a guest composer in their upcoming Contemporary Piano Weekend. Through the support of the Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin and the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris I flew over in December for a week of composition workshops with the students of the conservatoire in advance of the festival.

I really enjoyed working with the students. Some of the younger children showed a remarkable capacity and enthusiasm for techniques and ideas that would usually be taught at a university level! I was also particularly impressed by some of the older students who had never composed their own music before. I was really struck by the imagination and maturity of their ideas. Rather than basing their first compositions on any familiar models, they produced quite original material, surprisingly distinctive and clearly thought out.

I will return to Paris for the Contemporary Piano Weekend on 1st February, coincidentally enough travelling on the very same day as fellow Irish composer Judith Ring, who is leaving to begin her three-month residency at the Irish Cultural Centre. This neatly brings together plans to premiere a new composition of mine, For Hands, which I have written especially for the festival. Judith and I will play together to give the first performance of the piece, which is written for piano four hands. Meanwhile the students of the conservatoire will also premiere my set of piano miniatures, Beageens. The Beageens are an ongoing project of mine to which I have added three new pieces, on a theme by Erik Satie, especially for the Piano Weekend.

So I’m really looking forward to going back again for the festival. I enjoyed working with everyone at the conservatoire and the Cultural Centre is a lovely quiet space to stay in, and of course Paris is a just a fantastic city for a working trip or a relaxing visit. With three days of contemporary music to listen to, four new compositions of mine being premiered and plenty of composition workshops to do, I suspect I won’t be getting in much sight-seeing …

Séan Clancy

The concert takes place on Friday, 3 February 2012 at 7.30pm at the CBSO Centre, Birmingham and features the world premiere of Findentotenlieder by Seán Clancy and Gerald Barry’s recent work Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions.

Seán Clancy was BCMG/SAM Apprentice Composer-in-Residence during 2011. The Dublin-born composer spent much of the last twelve months working with BCMG and contributing to the life of the ensemble. He gained a unique insight into the way BCMG works by attending performances, rehearsals and workshops and was supported by mentors, including American composer David Lang.

Clancy’s new work for BCMG, Findentotenlieder, marks the culmination of his residency with the ensemble. Using both ‘found’ text and popular music as its inspiration, the work is an extended song in six verses with instrumental interludes, setting texts drawn from Gabriel Orozco’s artwork Obit, to music very loosely based on Someone Great, a piece by electronic dance group LCD Soundsystem. Obit, recently exhibited at Tate Modern, is a collection of single peculiar lines take from New York Times obituaries.

The other Irish work programmed, Gerald Barry’s Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions, alludes to the popular sheet music the composer avidly collected and listened to as a boy. It was premiered by the London Sinfonietta in March 2011. BCMG has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the music of Gerald Barry, commissioning several new works from him and performing his operas Powder her Face and The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit. The group will give the European premiere performance of Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest in April 2012.

The two Irish works will be performed alongside works by Judith Weir and Gérard Grisey. The concert will be conducted by Clement Power and the American soprano Susan Narucki is the soloist. A pre-concert talk, which begins at 6.30pm, will feature BCMG’s Artistic Director, Stephen Newbould, in conversation with Seán Clancy about his new work.

Listen to an interview with Séan Clancy about Findentotenlieder and his residency with the BCMG

Programme
Judith Weir: Musicians Wrestle Everywhere (BCMG SI commission 1995)
Seán Clancy: Findetotenlieder* (world premiere)
Gerald Barry: Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions
Gérard Grisey: Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil

Further information and booking: BCMG web site

See also: Stephen Graham’s interview with Séan Clancy in the Journal of Music

Linda Buckley is originally from Cork and now based in Dublin. She is a member of the Spatial Music Collective, and is RTÉ lyric fm’s current Composer-in-Residence.

The concert will also feature works by three young composers, Jack White, Yuko Ohara and Laura Bowler, whose compositions are the result of workshops with the BBC Symphony Orchestra as part of the Sound & Music/BBCSO Embedded Project. The programme concludes with British composer Richard Causton’s Between Two Waves of the Sea for orchestra and pre-recorded orchestra.

Further information

• Video interview with Linda Buckley (April 2011)
• Journal of Music Video Profile
• soundcloud.com/linda-buckley

John Kinsella has been described as “the most significant Irish symphonist since Stanford,” by BBC Radio 3. He has written extensively for orchestra and a CD featuring his sixth and seventh symphonies was released by the RTÉ lyric fm label in 2011. The performance of his tenth symphony in 2012 is significant as it marks his 80th birthday year.

Programme
Liszt – Angelus! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens
Beethoven – Symphony No. 4, Op. 60, B-flat Major
Jean Francaix – The Flower Clock, Suite for Oboe and Orchestra
Kinsella – Symphony No. 10 (World Premiere)

Limerick
Thursday 9th February @ 8pm at UCH Limerick
Bookings 061-331549 or www.uch.ie

Dublin
Saturday 11th February @ 8pm at the RDS Concert Hall
Bookings 061-331549 or www.ticketmaster.ie

Further information:www.irishchamberorchestra.com

Karen Power

Karen Power’s work, pink fluffy alarmetts still sound, was selected as the winning work by the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, USA composition competition. The work was chosen from among dozens of international entries by a blind jury and will be performed in March as part of the festival.

The Women Composers Festival of Hartford has, for the last eleven years, provided an educational and entertaining platform for the promotion of women’s music. Recognised as a champion of womenʼs music by institutions such as Meet the Composer and the International Alliance for Women in Music, the festival aims to broaden people’s understanding of musical literature and women’s contributions to this field through performance.

Karen Power’s pink fluffy alarmetts still sound was originally written for the new music group Alarm Will Sound in 2010 while working as a composer fellow at the Madness and Music Festival at UC Davis, California. Karen writes about the work and planned performance:

The work is for large ensemble and plays the notion of performance a bit with even the conductor being asked to sing! There is a nice little surprise at the end of the piece, which was really written knowing the character of Alarm Will Sound. Having spoke to the conductor of Curiosity Chamber Ensemble I think they’ll be well up for the challenge too!

The winning work will be performed by the NYC-based Curiosity Chamber Ensemble on Friday, 9 March 2012 at Central Connecticut State University at 7pm.

Further details on the festival are available from the Women Composers Festival of Hartford’s web site.

More on Karen Power.

Ensemble Avalon are a dynamic piano trio, made up of three of Ireland’s most accomplished soloists and chamber musicians. Since their inaugural concert in 2006 the trio have performed concerts, tours and series in Ireland, Italy and UK, and enjoy regular broadcasts on radio and television.

The concert marks the launch of the recently established Music Composition Centre at Trinity College, which aims to provide a new platform to produce active, practical composers equipped for the emerging music of the 21st century.

Tickets are free of charge. However, you must reserve your tickets before 5pm on Friday, 20 January 2012. Contact compcent@tcd.ie to reserve a ticket.

Concert Programme:
Evangelio Rigaki: To Be Elsewhere
Arvo Pärt: Fratres
Dimitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No.2

Concorde

The performance is part of the contemporary music ensemble’s successful Up Close with Music series and takes place between 2 and 5pm on Saturday, 11 February 2012 in CMC.

Jane O’Leary, Concorde’s director, is the featured composer on the programme. She has written a piece for solo violin dedicated to Concorde’s violinist Elaine Clark, and also pays tribute to the building in which it will be premiered, No. 19, Fishamble Street. The site of a busy fish market in medieval times, the street has also been home to Kennans Engineering works and the famous 18th Century Music Hall. The building was completely renovated in 2000 to house the Contemporary Music Centre.

Also on the programme are premieres of new compositions by Irish composers Alyson Barber and Massimo Davi, both of whom have written new pieces to celebrate Concorde’s 35th anniversary. Alyson’s duo An Draíocht captures the atmosphere of a story where a spell is cast by a group of cloaked individuals on a cold winter’s night, in order to rejuvenate a dying wood. Korean composer Si-Hyun Yi has composed a new piece for Concorde and will be attending the concert for the premiere of The Goblins and the Golden Clubs, based on a Korean fable and in part a satire on our overly materialistic modern society. Shia is represented on Concorde’s CD, Reflections, which was launched in the CMC in December 2010. Scottish composer Katrina Burton’s piece for solo cello, 74 Front Street, has been selected for performance following submissions as part of a project called ‘Global Connections.’ All of these composers will be present for the performances.

Concorde musicians Madeleine Staunton, Paul Roe, Elaine Clark & David James perform these works in three separate programmes at 2pm, 3pm and 4pm. Admission is free but seating is limited and advance booking is strongly recommended to concorde@eircom.net.

The Series is supported by a Music Project Award from the Arts Council and continues on March 10 (Elaine Agnew, commissioned composer), July 1 (Raymond Deane, commissioned composer) and July 22 (David Fennessy, commissioned composer).

The West Cork Chamber Music Festival is delighted to partner with the Contemporary Music Centre for this Composer Competition in 2012. It reflects the commitment of the Festival and the Centre to nurture the creation and performance of new Irish music. This year the competition is once again kindly supported by the Irish Music Rights Organisation, IMRO.

West Cork Music invites Irish composers under 30 years of age on 1 January 2012 to submit works for string quartet (violin, violin, viola, cello) or piano trio (violin, cello, piano) of between 5-8 minutes duration for workshopping and performance at the 2012 West Cork Chamber Music Festival. Three works will be selected.

The composer of each selected work will receive a prize of €500 and will be asked to attend a workshop at the Festival on Saturday 30 June 2012 where the piece will be played through by a group on the Festival’s masterclass programme. This will be followed by an informal public workshop between composer and performers led by Festival Composer-in-Residence, Thomas Larcher. The premieres will take place during the Festival in the Town Concert series on 1, 5 and 6 July.

The aim of the competition is to give aspiring Irish composers a platform for their work to be evaluated and performed in front of an audience.

Full details for entrants are available from the opportunities section of the CMC website: http://www.cmc.ie/opportunities/competitions.html#West Cork

Scores must be received by 31 March 2012. 

A major figure in Twentieth Century music, John Cage questioned most of the deepest held beliefs about what music is and can be. His philosophies, drawing upon spiritual practices from all over the world, are deeply considered and profound and were expressed artistically in many ways, including music, theatre, the visual arts and in written form.

The Cork-based Quiet Music Ensemble (QME) is dedicated to the performance of experimental music and to collaborative inter-disciplinary artistic creativity. The group avoids conventional concert-style staging and their performances often take place in new and unusual performance spaces.

Child of Tree is presented in association with the Triskel Arts Centre and supported by RTÉ lyric fm. The concert will be recorded for later broadcast on Nova, RTÉ lyric fm’s new music programme presented by Bernard Clarke.

Tickets are free and are available from the Triskel Arts Centre Box Office, Tel: 021 427 2022.

The conference is organised by the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) and takes place at the Conservatory of Music and Drama in the Dublin Institute of Technology.

The conference programme offers graduate students an opportunity to present their work in a supportive environment and stimulate further research. Papers will be given on a range of topics by students representing universities in Ireland and abroad.

Further information on the conference is available from the SMI website.