New Music Dublin 2025 - Festival Programme

A festival of new music for curious minds

2nd-6th April 2025

FESTIVAL

PROGRAMME

Welcome to New Music Dublin 2025!

This is my eighth year as director of this wonderful, madcap, rollicking rollercoaster of a festivaland you’d think by now, after 8 years at the helm, I had some kind of a handle on what to say or to write as an introduction to it all. I should be able to stick my big Festival Director hat on and come up with some nice, pithy, condensed way of describing what is about to happen between the 2nd and 6th April: maybe a well-thought-through article about the big themes I’ve threaded through the programme, or a smart blog post that elucidates all the subtle links from concert to concert. But, in truth, every year, whenever I attempt to do that, I find that any neatly-constructed boxes of ideas and themes end up leaving more out than they include. It’s as though the sheer creative aliveness of all the music at this festival makes it wriggle out of any shackles or definitions I try to make for it - and instead the music simply enjoys being itself without me - or anyone - trying to tell it what to be.

So, what’s to be said? With explorations of Javanese Gamelan alongside Uilleann Pipes, new music for the cosmos at Dunsink Observatory, sonic sculptures, free improvisation in complete darkness in a disused fridge, and compositions shaped by environmental recordings - and far far more besides - the music at this festival cheerfully resists any attempt at easy categorisation. It is, as always, a testament to the glorious unexpectedness and creativity of new music-making on this island and beyond. 25 events from Wednesday to Sunday - every single one its own, splendid, unique thing. Come and join us!

Me and the whole New Music Dublin team are looking forward enormously to welcoming you all to NMD 2025!

John Harris Festival Director

Our heartfelt thanks to Aisling Agnew / Aisling Coyle / Andreas Borregaard / Andrew Smith / Aoife Concannon / Berginald Rash / Brian Irvine and the Valiant Members of the Totally Made up Orchestra / Brian Lynch / Caimin Gilmore / Caroline Feehily / Catherine Kirby / Cathy Stokes / Caitriona O’Mahony / Chamber Choir Ireland / Ciaran Kelly / Conor McAuley / Crash Ensemble / Declan Smyth / Derek O’Connor / Dr Alexandra Lukes / Ed Bennett./ Elisabetta Sabbatini / Embassy of France in Dublin / Everyone at the Contemporary Music Centre / Everyone in Cór na nÓg and Cór Linn / Evlana / Evonne Ferguson / Ficino Ensemble / Fiona Robertson / Gary Sheehan / Graham McKenzie / Harry Martin / Ian Smith / The Improvised Music Company / Jennifer Phillips / Joanna Wyld / Joanne Taaffe / Joe Csibi / John Butcher / Jonathan Pearson / Karlin Lillington / Keith Farrell / Kerry FitzGerald / Kevin Sommerville / Kieran Tobin / Lesley Bishop / Louis Scully / Luke Clancy / Majella Hollywood / Marjie Kaley / Mary Amond O’Brien / Mary Sexton / Matthew Nolan / Maya Homburger / Molly Keane / Everyone at the National Concert Hall / The National Symphony Orchestra / Patricia Flynn / Paul Hunt / Peter Moran / Phoebe Nevins / Quiet Music Ensemble / Robert Kearns / Robert Read / Rosita Wolfe / The RTÉ Concert Orchestra / RTÉ Culture / RTÉ Lyric FM / RTÉ Radio 1 / Sadhbh Leahy / Siân Cunningham / Thurston Moore / Toner Quinn / Everyone in every department at the Arts Council / All the composers / All the performers / All the technicians / … and everyone else who has made this festival possible. We thank you and salute you!

Nocturne

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 - 7pm

Dunsink Observatory, Dublin

Ann Cleare - Nocturne (Irish premiere)

line upon line percussion

Cullen Faulk

Matthew Teodori

Jordan Walsh

Programme Notes

NOCTURNE is a new site-specific evening-length work by composer Ann Cleare, created in collaboration with theatre-maker Shanna May Breen and multimedia artist Maura McDonnell. For millennia, the stars have guided how we live and have shaped some of our earliest and most important mythologies. In the sky, we have found gods, the measurement of time, chemical secrets and divine warnings. Yet the more secrets we decode, the more mysteries we discover – drawing us ever deeper.

Part music, part theatre and part collective wandering/wondering, NOCTURNE is a dynamic 90-minute work that unfolds across the indoor and outdoor spaces of the historic Dunsink Observatory. From ancient maps to optical instruments to modern spectroscopy, audiences will experience how the night sky has been observed throughout history, exploring what has guided and puzzled philosophical and scientific imaginations across time.

Expect transmissions from space, experiments with light, alignments from ancient worlds, encounters with a spiral galaxy discovered in Birr in 1845, outdoor walking, instrument building, and an illuminated large red orb symbolising a red dwarf – the last star that will shine in our universe 10 trillion years from now – all directed by the musicians of line upon line percussion trio.

This modern-day nocturne is designed for sites that celebrate and protect dark skies. Commissioned by The Ernst von Siemens Foundation with support from The Arts Council of Ireland.

Biographies

Ann Cleare

Ann Cleare is a composer and technologist, creating through the medium of sound. This practice extends to the areas of concert music, opera, sonic environments, and hybrid instrumental design. She is particularly fascinated by timbre and texture and how these parameters can be activated with the use of technology to explore places, people and ideas through sound. In all her work, the goal lies in expressing the sound of now, including how this relates to past and future worlds, exploring the sonic texture of what it means to be alive in the 21st century.

An internationally celebrated composer, Ann’s work has been presented by major broadcasters such as the BBC, NPR, ORF, SWR, WDR, and has been presented on some of the world’s most renowned stages, such as The Berlin Philharmonie, Walt Disney Hall in LA, Lincoln Centre in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, and HARPA in Reykjavík. Ann is an Assistant Professor of Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin and her scores are published by Project Schott New York. annclearecomposer.com

Shanna May Breen

Inspired by climate conversations, performance marker Shanna May Breen creates multi-platform artworks to carbonate change.

Previous works have seen her plant a micro native forest in her hometown to devise a performance about trees – Root, Dublin Theatre Festival 2021, compose a ‘plastic pilgrimage’ on board a coastal train – Mould Into Shape, Dublin Fringe Festival 2019, and build a miniature mega city live on stage with her mum – Superstructure, The Peacock 2019. In 2018 Shanna was awarded the Dublin Fringe Festival Next Stage Wild Card Award for The Sound of Phoenix, a travelling soundscape of Phoenix Park on board a 1920s bus.

Most recently, Shanna curated and produced GULL, a site-specific city project dedicated to the Dublin (sea)gulls – a co-commission by the Abbey Theatre and Dublin Fringe Festival 2022. The project featured the work of five multidisciplinary artists, a Currach rower and an ornithologist. GULL was developed alongside the Pan Pan International Mentorship Programme 2022. www. shannamaybreen.com

Maura McDonnell

Maura McDonnell is an Irish artist and Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin. Maura’s art practice is in the visual arts and experimental film/media art fields. Her main artistic output focuses on creating abstract experimental abstract animation film; she calls this art, a visual music art. Maura’s visual music works have been screened, presented at music concerts, animation festivals, film screenings, academic symposia and in art installations all over the world, such as Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Singapore, UK, US. Her visual music works have won several awards and honorary mentions,

including a visual music award in 2011 in the visual music award event in Frankfurt, Germany. Recently, she has been invited to present retrospectives of her abstract animation work in masterclasses for the International Monstra Animation Festival, in Lisbon (2024) and the Punto y Raya Festival Academy, in Barcelona (2024). www.mauramcdonnellart.com

line upon line

Formed in 2009 at The University of Texas at Austin, line upon line exists to champion living composers and pursue the musically unfamiliar.

The Austin-based trio has premiered well over 100 new works for percussion and has worked with composers in residencies at Harvard University, Stanford University, Cal Poly, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, Kunstuniversität Graz, University of Huddersfield, University of Liverpool, City University of London and Monash University (Melbourne).

Internationally, the group has performed at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Open Circuit Festival (Liverpool), Novalis Festival (Osijek), in Basel (Hochschule für Musik), Berlin (Unerhörte Musik), Cologne (Loft Köln), Freiburg (Hochschule für Musik), Graz (Open Music), Koper (Koper Biennale) and London (City, University of London), and has taught at the Conservatoriums in Melbourne and Sydney, London (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Manchester (Royal Northern College of Music) and Tours (Le pôle Aliénor). Nationally, line upon line has performed and taught in 25 different states, at two Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento) and The Myrna Loy Center (Helena, MT).

line upon line consists of Cullen Faulk, Matthew Teodori and Jordan Walsh. www.lineuponlinepercussion.org

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Berginald Presents Bombast!

Thursday 3rd April 2025 - 1.30pm

The Studio, National Concert Hall, Dublin

Joy Guidry Just because I have a dick doesn’t mean I’m a Man

Carlos Simon Loop for string trio

Quinn Mason In Memory for solo horn

Iván Enrique Rodriguez The Broken Contract for harp and recording

Nkeiru Okoye Breaking Bread for solo viola

Jessie Montgomery Peace for clarinet and harp

Allison Loggins-Hull Stolen for solo cello

Gabriela Ortiz Atlas-Pumas for violin and marimba

1. Primer Tiempo

2. Medio Tiempo

3. Segundo Tiempo

Shawn Okpebholo There is Always Light for clarinet, bassoon and marimba

Jeff Scott The Idle Mind for solo horn

Joseph Hallman Concerto for B-flat/E-flat clarinet, violin, viola, cello, bassoon, horn, harp & percussion (world premiere)

1. Berthaleigh

2. Sirius: Cliquant

3. Starry Eyed: Oculus

4. Wishi

5. Yana

6. Shema

Chelsea Sharpe violin

Giammaria Tesei viola

Ailbhe McDonagh cello

Fiona Gryson harp

Berginald Rash clarinet

Greg Crowley bassoon

Hannah Miller horn

Patrick Nolan percussion

John Doyle conductor

Ishmael Claxton visual artist

Programme Notes

Featuring works by Black composers, many of whom form the US-based composer collective Blacknificent 7, and Latiné composers, Berginald presents Bombast! features the world premiere of Joseph Hallman’s Clarinet Concerto for clarinet and chamber ensemble, interpolation and extemporisation around a Joy Guidry timely and arresting original, powerful and poignant works by such provocative and revolutionary composers as GRAMMY® winning Gabriela Ortiz, GRAMMY® -nominated Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon, and Imani Winds founding member Jeff Scott. Listeners will also encounter introspective works by the highly celebrated Nkeiru Okoye, internationally lauded Quinn Mason, GRAMMY® winning composer and Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead’s Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery and GRAMMY® nominated composer Shawn Okpebholo.

Right here in Dublin, Bombast! brings together some of today’s most celebrated musicians from around the world such as violinist Chelsea Sharpe of the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra and viola soloist, chamber musician, pedagogue and recording artist Clifton Harrison formerly of the Kreutzer Quartet, in collaboration with some of Ireland’s own incredibly gifted musicians such as concert curator, critically acclaimed clarinettist, presenter and recording artist Berginald Rash; founder of the spectacular Fuddlefest and brilliant hornist Hannah Miller of the Irish Chamber Orchestra; Bangers & Crash percussionist Paddy Nolan; internationally lauded and critically acclaimed cellist, composer and recording artist Ailbhe McDonagh of Ireland’s Ficino Ensemble; harpist, recording artist, artistic director of Music on the Farm at Cornstown House and Ph.D candidate Fiona Gryson and the National Symphony Orchestra’s own Section Leader/Principal bassoon Greg Crowley.

In addition to the bombastic tonal offerings, Bombast! features visual art by New York born, Europe-based visual media artist Ishmael Claxton whose poignant and zeitgeist capturing work has been seen internationally from Japan, the Caribbean, Europe and across the US.

Grouped in couplets of solo and chamber pieces like an ode to the chasm between rugged individualism and the human ache for community and connection, Bombast! is the audacity to live out loud, boldly and unapologetically; the assertion of one’s right to exist, and the unwavering expression of and commitment to one’s identity despite the risk of violence and retribution.

www.berginaldrash.com/bombast

Biographies

Chelsea Sharpe

American violinist Chelsea Sharpe is a member of the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra in Croatia and previously played with Louisville Orchestra (US). From 2017–2021 she was a fellow at the New World Symphony and has played with the Grant Park Orchestra, toured with the Sphinx Virtuosi, and serves as a substitute for the London, Atlanta, and Indianapolis Symphonies.

Most recently she joined the London Symphony on tour across Europe and Asia under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano and performed at the BBC Proms with Chineke! Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall. Ms. Sharpe attended Rice University, the University of Southern California, and has spent summers at the Grafenegg Academy, Sarasota Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Music Academy of the West, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and Le Domaine Forget de Charlevoix (Quebec). She is a proud graduate of the Atlanta Symphony’s Talent Development Program, founded by Ms. Azira Hill.

Giammaria Tesei

Giammaria Tesei received his degree at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Paraguay and the Miranda Music School. He studied privately with Gerardo Gramajo before moving to Ireland to complete a Masters degree at the Irish World Academy, where he studied with Diane Daly and Joachim Roewer.

He has performed under the baton of renowned conductors such as Thomas Zehetmair, Jörg Widmann, Gustavo Dudamel and Florian Donderer, and has worked with ensembles including the Irish Chamber Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Paraguay, Irish Baroque Orchestra and Irish National Opera Orchestra, among others.

An avid chamber musician, Giammaria has been part of numerous ensembles including the Guarani String Quartet, Mburicao String Quartet, Carragh Trio, Caleidoscopio Ensemble, Arteo Quartet and Eveline Quartet.

Since 2014, he has been an active member of pu Joa, a collective of musicians dedicated to the promotion of chamber music with a particular focus on contemporary Latin American composers.

Ailbhe McDonagh

Ailbhe McDonagh has earned international recognition as both a soloist and chamber musician. According to Fanfare Magazine, ‘she plays with flawless technique, faultless intonation, and a strong yet meltingly sweet tone’. Ailbhe has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Yale Norfolk Festival and the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival. She has given performances for the Irish President at Áras an Uachtaráin, appears regularly on national television and radio, and her recordings have been broadcast worldwide.

As an accomplished chamber musician, Ailbhe collaborates with the acclaimed pianist John O’Conor, with her sister Orla McDonagh, and with violinist Lynda O’Connor. She is a member of the Ficino Ensemble and the traditional Irish music crossover group Trio Elatha. In addition to her performance career, Ailbhe is an established composer published by Boosey & Hawkes. Her compositions have been featured in syllabi worldwide, and she has received commissions from festivals in Ireland, USA and Europe. Her debut orchestral work Irish Isles Suite was recorded and released by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2023.

Her debut solo album It’s a Cello Thing (2012) was named CD of the Week on Ireland’s national classical music station, RTÉ Lyric FM. Her 2020 album Skellig was featured in the Irish Examiner’s Top Albums of the Year. In 2021, Ailbhe released Beethoven: Complete Cello Sonatas with John O’Conor on the Steinway label. Classical Music Sentinel states, ‘McDonagh and O’Conor coalesce perfectly, as if propelled by the music’s undertow, and echo each other’s expressive mien with dynamic balance’ and proclaims it as one of their Essential Recordings. In 2024, she released her new album, Bach: Complete Solo Cello Suites on the Steinway & Sons label. This is the first such recording by an Irish cellist. Ailbhe has been a member of the strings faculty at the Royal Irish Academy of Music since 2010. She is also in demand as a masterclass instructor. Ailbhe performs on an Andrea Postacchini cello from 1833. www.ailbhemcdonagh.com

Fiona Gryson

Fiona Gryson enjoys a varied career as a professional, freelance harpist and teacher. A thoughtful and consummate curator, Fiona is music director of the Cornstown House ‘Music on the Farm’ concert series, a member of the Advisory Group for Cruit Éireann | Harp Ireland, director of the Fingal Harp Ensemble and co-director of the TU Dublin Conservatoire Harp Ensemble with Rachel Duffy and Clíona Doris. Fiona is in demand as a teacher of both lever and concert pedal harps, running a private harp studio in Co. Dublin. A recipient of a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship awarded by Research Ireland, Fiona Gryson is pursuing PhD research with Prof. Clíona Doris and Dr. Helen Lawlor at TU Dublin Conservatoire. With clarinettist Berginald Rash, Fiona recently released their début album of clarinet and harp transcriptions entitled Dathanna: Hues and Shades under the Orchid label. She has performed as Principal Harpist with the National Symphony and RTÉ Concert Orchestras, the Irish Chamber and the Ulster Orchestras. As a soloist and member of ensembles, she has performed extensively nationally and internationally, both live and on television and radio. With Rachel Duffy, she is delighted to co-direct Cairde na Cruite’s An Chúirt Chruitireachta International Harp Festival 2025. www.fionagryson.ie

Berginald Rash

Hailed for his ‘especially stylish’ playing (The Guardian), acclaimed American-Irish clarinettist and historical clarinet practitioner Berginald Rash is an exciting international artist who has performed at the Boyne Music Festival and Lake Tahoe Summer Music Festival, and won the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival’s 2015 Support Act Residency with the Mondrian Trio. Based in Dublin, he was awarded the Recital Artist Diploma from the Royal Irish Academy

of Music. A versatile and skilled pedagogue and clinician, he has served on the PRIZM Music Camp & International Chamber Music Festival faculty and has given masterclasses at Truman State University, University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point, University of Kansas, Millikin University and Vanderbilt University. Mr. Rash has been heard with such orchestras as the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Orchestra of the Swan, the Virginia Symphony and the Ulster Orchestra. He has performed on BBC 3’s ‘In Tune’ with Sean Rafferty and has made, among others, his BBC Proms, Lucerne Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Snape Maltings Proms, Gent Festival Van Vlaanderen, Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth and Royal Festival Halls, Elbphilharmonie and the Concertgebouw debuts.

As both a chamber musician and soloist, Mr. Rash has collaborated with members of such orchestras as London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt hr-Sinfonieorchester, Atlanta Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and with the ConTempo Quartet. He has been a featured concerto soloist at the National Concert Hall and Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin. With harpist Fiona Gryson, Berginald performed as part of the online ‘Sundays @ Noon’ concert series at the Hugh Lane Gallery which was also featured on NearTV FM and at Kaleidoscope Night music series. Berginald is a Devon & Burgani Artist on the Fluency series and has been featured on the cover of the International Clarinet Association’s (ICA) September 2020 publication of The Clarinet with clarinetist Mariam Adam.

Mr. Rash is a TEDx speaker, was featured on Classically Black Podcast’s ‘Black Excellence’ segment, and has been a reviewer for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Record Review’, a presenter on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Inside Music’, presented a three-part docu-series on BBC Radio 3 entitled ‘The American Clarinet’, and a contributor on BBC Radio 4’s ‘How to Play’. He has been featured on RTÉ lyric FM’s ‘Full Score’ with Liz Nolan and Aedín in the Afternoon where he and his duo partner, harpist Fiona Gryson, shared their debut album, Dathanna: Hues and Shades. Since 2022 he has served as the voice of RTÉ lyric FM’s Black History Month. A Devon & Burgani artist, Berginald currently sits on the Board of Directors for both Crash Ensemble and Chamber Music Scotland.

He has been awarded the Arts Council of Ireland’s 2020 & 2022 Music Bursary as well as a 2021 Arts Council Agility Award. In 2022, Berginald began his journey into historical clarinet, joined the Board of Trustees for Chamber Music Scotland, the Board of Directors for Crash Ensemble, and served on the faculty of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s YOLA Institute. In May 2024 Mr. Rash made his solo debut with RTÉ Concert Orchestra for RTÉ lyric FM’s live streamed 25th Anniversary Gala. Mr. Rash advocates and consults in the areas of justice, equality/equity, diversity, accessibility, and inclusion. In this capacity he has worked with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Contemporary Music Centre Ireland, and has spoken as panellist and keynote speaker at the Compear Global Education Network, Sphinx Organization and Accenture.

Greg Crowley

Greg was appointed Section Principal Bassoon of the National Symphony Orchestra in May 2021. He obtained his undergraduate degree in 2019 studying with Janet Bloxwich at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he was awarded first class honours. In 2020 he then completed a Postgraduate Diploma at the RCS under the tutelage of David Hubbard, Alison Green and Graeme Brown.

During his studies Greg won the RCS Classical Concerto Prize, which culminated in a performance of Weber’s Bassoon Concerto with the RCS Symphony Orchestra in 2018. He also won the inaugural RCS Bassoon Prize in his final year of study. Other concerto engagements include the Hibernian Orchestra in Dublin and in July 2023 he made his concerto debut with the NSO playing Strauss’ Duet Concertino.

Hannah Miller

Hannah Miller received her bachelor’s degree from Finland’s Sibelius Academy and graduated with a Masters degree from The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the William Schuman Prize for outstanding achievement in music and leadership.

Hannah currently works as Principal Horn with the Irish National Opera and joined the Irish Chamber Orchestra in 2023. She also performs with the Wexford Festival Opera, and is a former member of the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland and the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra in Finland. With a keen interest in new music, Hannah is a member of the experimental Kirkos Ensemble, and she has also worked with Crash Ensemble, Le Concert Impromptu and Ulysses Ensemble. She enjoys a varied career including performances at festivals including the Killaloe Chamber Music Festival, New Music Dublin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and All Together Now, and has performed with chamber groups including the Picorlino Trio, Ficino Ensemble and Cornucopia Quartet.

As a soloist, Hannah has performed Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1 with the Greystones Orchestra and Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 1 with Wexford Sinfonia in 2025; Britten’s Serenade with Christopher Bowen and the Hibernian Orchestra in 2024; the principal horn obbligato from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in 2020 in Carnegie Hall with The Juilliard Orchestra; Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 2 with the Esker Festival Orchestra in 2019 and Schumann’s Concerto for four horns with Wexford Sinfonia in 2017.

Hannah is the Festival Director and founder of ‘FuddleFest’, an annual family-run music festival based at her home in Fuddletown, Wexford which will be taking place on the 30 and 31 August 2025. www.fuddlefest.ie

Patrick Nolan

Patrick Nolan enjoys an eclectic career as a freelance percussionist. Moving to Glasgow from his native Dublin in 2009, he studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland under Kurt-Hans Goedicke, John Poulter, Tom Hunter, Martin Gibson, Christopher Lamb and Eric Sammut. During his time there, he was the grateful recipient of the ABRSM scholarship and winner of the Governors’ Recital Prize.

Patrick regularly performs with orchestras across Ireland and the UK, including the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Irish National Opera, Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet and Royal Northern Sinfonia. He has had the honour of touring with the European Union Youth Orchestra. Keen to showcase the myriad possibilities of percussion instruments, Patrick has enjoyed touring with Alex Petcu’s Bangers and Crash group, most recently in the latter part of 2024, delivering workshops and playing concerts across the country. He has the privilege to perform on occasion with Crash Ensemble, Red Note Ensemble and, as a founding member, the Glasgow Percussion Collective.

John Doyle

John Doyle is one of Ireland’s most exciting and innovative conductors. After graduating from Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy of Music with first class honours, John studied with figures such as George Hurst, Atso Almila, Rodolfo Saglimbeni, Benjamin Zander and Robert Houlihan. He now divides his time equally between choral and orchestral conducting, appearing in venues as varied as Dublin’s NCH, Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall, the Scottish National Events

Centre, Aberdeen’s King’s Hall, the Marketplace Armagh, Waterfront Belfast and the Guildhall Derry, across a wide range of repertoires and genres.

John is a passionate advocate of new music. He has been Artistic Director of Co-Orch Dublin since 2011 where his work focuses on 20th-century and contemporary repertoire. He has commissioned new works for the orchestra by award-winning young composers as well as giving the Irish premieres of works by internationally recognised composers such as Max Richter. He appears regularly with groups such as the Dublin Symphony Orchestra, Dublin Baroque Players (City of Dublin Chamber Orchestra) and the Orchestra of St. Luke. Notable recent projects include ‘A Midsummer Rights Theme’, performed on International Music Day: a groundbreaking reimagining of Beethoven 9 which saw this seminal piece performed alongside four world premieres representing Ireland’s most exciting young composers’ responses to Beethoven’s epic Choral Symphony.

John is Music Director of Mount Anville Choral Society and conducts the multi award-winning Dublin Concert Band. Recent DCB Projects have included HARP, A River Cantata, as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival in collaboration with Ulysses Opera Theater and a residency at the prestigious La Croix Valmer festival in the South of France. He was named as Music Director of Caintairi Avondale in September 2017.

Ishmael Claxton

Ishmael Claxton is a New York-born photographer who has made Dublin his home for the past decade. Through his lens, Ishmael explores pressing societal issues, using photography as a powerful tool for storytelling. His acclaimed series, Migration/Integration and Capall Gang, delve into themes of identity, culture and transformation, offering a thought-provoking perspective on the world’s ongoing changes.

A passionate advocate for Ireland’s photography community, Ishmael co-founded the ÍOVA Club, a collective that fosters collaboration and creativity among photographers. Ishmael’s work has been widely showcased in both national and international exhibitions. In 2023, he participated in 39 exhibitions, with notable highlights including shows at Outset Gallery, 126 Gallery Galway, Rua Red Gallery, Carlow Visual and the Ulster Museum. His portrait of artist Sean Hillen garnered special recognition in the LensCulture Portrait Choice Awards 2023. In addition to group exhibitions, Ishmael has held solo shows at prominent venues such as Gallery X (2022) and Round Rabbit (2023), with exhibitions at the National Concert Hall and the Irish Georgian Society in 2024. His artistry continues to inspire, earning him the TLP Book Award in 2024, an AIR residency at the Photo Museum, and a place in the Shutter Hub Open 2025: Selected Photographers exhibition. Through his dedication to both his craft and the broader photography community, Ishmael Claxton remains a vital force in shaping contemporary visual culture. www.ishmaelclaxton.com

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Surround Sounds: Irish forests, rivers & peatlands

Thursday 3rd April 2025 - 3.30pm

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

Robert Coleman These hills used to be forests

Lara Weaver Soft Ground

Pedro Rebelo Crana

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

Aisling Agnew flute

William Curran clarinet / bass clarinet

Darragh Morgan violin

David McCann cello

Daniel Browell piano Programme Notes

Surround Sounds is conceived as a unified approach to the intertwining of instrumental and environmental sound worlds. The three composers featured on this programme are field recording practitioners who explore sites sensitive to environmental change. These sites have been the focus of continuous listening and recording practices over a number of years, each revealing its distinct sonic character. In works that encapsulate a particular ecosystem—forests, rivers and peatlands—

these composers guide us through unique habitats that share sonic qualities alongside their special characteristics, including varying levels of human interaction and intervention.

These are works that cultivate active listening in both performers and audiences—a kind of listening in the field—explored through an array of compositional approaches, including graphic and audio scores, field recordings from each of the sites, and live electronic elements. Presented in an immersive spatial audio format known as ambisonics, this programme invites audiences into a transformative shared listening experience.

Robert Coleman (b. 1989) These hills used to be forests (2024)

‘These hills used to be forests guides the listener through the soundscape of the new Glasna-Bradan Wood in the Belfast Hills. This work is an extension of my ongoing exploration into ecological soundwalks, adapting the experience of these walks for the concert stage. Through narration and field recordings of local birdlife, the piece delves into our relationship with the natural world and the transformations occurring in the hills over time. Musical material is generated from these recorded sounds and the performers are encouraged to listen in real-time, and provide their own response.’

Lara Weaver (b. 1998) Soft Ground (2024)

‘Soft Ground is a re-sounding of the Northern Irish bog. Inspired by field recordings taken from within the miry layers of peat, the piece derives sonic material from the subtle under-sounds of the wetlands – a vibrant, delicately explosive sound world of bubbling and crackling. Then, just as peat forms when material does not fully decay in acidic and anaerobic conditions, this sonic material lingers and seeps over in a generous build-up of layers, alternatively permeating and disrupting, settling together in a sonic swamp.’

Pedro Rebelo (1972) Crana (2024)

‘Crana is a sonic exploration of the River Crana in Donegal, Ireland. Through its short 12-mile path, the river has an impressive variety of soundscapes, reflecting various environments and water flows. The work uses immersive field recordings as the base for deriving instrumental materials which invite active listening and interaction between the performers through a score that negotiates relationships between fixed and fluid musical ideas.’

Biographies

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

‘A ground-breaking and dynamic ensemble…’ Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble is Northern Ireland’s cutting-edge contemporary music group, featuring a world-class group of musicians who specialise in the performance of modern music. Showcase performers at Classical:NEXT in Berlin 2024, Hard Rain was founded by composer Greg Caffrey in 2013. They have given multiple premieres and developed a dedicated following for new music in their home city of Belfast and beyond.

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble features on several successful recordings, including Up By the Roots (Delphian), The Tyndall Effect (Métier) and their debut double CD A Terrible Beauty (Diatribe). A former Guardian pick of the week with works by eleven Irish composers, it is ‘ ...an extraordinary

demonstration of the sheer range of colour it is possible to extract from this type of ensemble... in terms of performance standard and range of music commissioned, this CD set makes one look forward with anticipation to Hard Rain’s second decade promoting Irish composition’ (The Journal of Music).

In addition to their well-established concert season at home, and having performed at festivals around UK and Ireland such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, New Music Dublin, Sonorities Festival, Walled City Music and Belfast International Festival, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble have also performed further afield at Musicahora Festival in Chile, Säälchen, Holzmarkt in Berlin, Nieuwe Noten in Amsterdam, St Andrews University, Sheffield University and Birmingham Conservatoire. 2025 will see the ensemble perform extensively on international stages across Europe, South America and Asia.

As Ensemble-in-Residence at Queen’s University Belfast, Hard Rain are dedicated industry professionals and they work closely with students throughout various stages of their development. Their various outreach and education initiatives in 24/25 also include Ulster University, NI Film Scoring School with Dumbworld, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Limerick School of Music, Belfast Conducting Workshop, Ulster Touring Opera, Talent Development programmes with PRSf, and their long-standing association with Ulster Youth Orchestra.

‘Every once in a while, a group of like-minded artists come together and shake things up. They become the catalyst of something special, pushing the boundaries of creativity and taking their chosen art form to new places and new heights. The only contemporary classical music repertoire ensemble in Northern Ireland, Hard Rain’s championing of innovative New Music is acknowledged as pioneering on these islands... They have built new audiences for the music, performing works that we would not otherwise have the opportunity to experience live, and all to the highest possible standards. In doing so, they have reconnected Northern Ireland’s music making with the best of modern classical music from elsewhere in the world... We are proud to support such an accomplished, dynamic and ground-breaking company’ (Ciaran Scullion: Head of Music and Opera at Arts Council of Northern Ireland).

Through extensive commissioning (around 80 pieces to date) and programming of cutting-edge contemporary music, Hard Rain gives audiences access to music and composers’ voices that would otherwise not be heard. They are passionate about bringing Irish music to wider audiences on a worldwide platform and are also looking forward to collaborations with other ground-breaking ensembles: Hashtag Ensemble (Poland) in 2025, and Third Angle New Music (USA) in 2026.

Robert Coleman

Robert completed his Masters at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Yannis Kyriakides and Diderik Wagenaar. A previous graduate of UCD School of Architecture, his current work is informed by spatial and visual idioms, often providing listeners with multiple perspectives on musical material. As a result, recent work has also included site specific, installation and audio-visual configurations. Highly active in artistic direction, he is a founding member and now artistic advisor of the Dublin based new music group, Kirkos. In May 2019 he directed Dune Works, a site-specific event for James Turrell’s Celestial Vault in Kijkduin, the Netherlands, which included his work How many sides do you see? performed by the Dutch ensemble But What About. He also held the position of secretary of the Irish Composers Collective from 2015–2017.

Robert has a pressing interest in interdisciplinary collaborations and has worked with various artists such as the Experimental Film Society, Pim Piët (visual artist/designer) Laura Sarah Dowdall (dancer/choreographer with RUNNING BLIND), Mihai Cucu (visual artist), and Slipdraft (lighting design). As a performer he has explored experimental repertoire from Irish and international artists, performing at New Music Dublin 2017, Kirkos: Fluxfest, Jennifer Walshe’s

Aisteach, Kirkos: Body Noise Work and also in collaboration with composer/performer Andy Ingamells, amongst others.

Lara Weaver

Lara Weaver is a composer, researcher and performer from England. Lara is currently undertaking a PhD at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast, under the supervision of Professor Pedro Rebelo. Previously, she was at St John’s College, Cambridge, where she read for her undergraduate degree, achieving a First, and MPhil, which was awarded with Distinction. Her current research investigates the capacity of sound to observe and give voice to changing ecosystems, interrogating the need for a ‘sound studies in/of the Anthropocene’. Lara is the recipient of a Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Pedro Rebelo

Pedro Rebelo is a composer, sound artist and performer. In 2002, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Edinburgh, where he conducted research in both music and architecture. Pedro has recently led participatory projects involving communities in Belfast, favelas in Maré, Rio de Janeiro, travelling communities in Portugal and a slum town in Mozambique. This work has resulted in sound art exhibitions at venues such as the Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, Espaço Ecco in Brasilia and Parque Lage and Museu da Maré in Rio and MAC Nitéroi. His music has been presented in venues such as the Melbourne Recital Hall, National Concert Hall Dublin, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Ars Electronica, Casa da Música, and in events such as Weimarer Frühjahrstage fur zeitgenössische Musik, Wien Modern Festival, Cynetart and Música Viva. His work as a pianist and improvisor has been released by Creative Source Recordings and he has collaborated with musicians such as Chris Brown, Mark Applebaum, Carlos Zingaro, Evan Parker and Pauline Oliveros.

Pedro has been Visiting Professor at Stanford University, senior visiting professor at UFRJ, Brazil and Collaborating Researcher at INEM-md Universidade Nova, Lisboa. He has been Music Chair and keynote speaker for numerous international conferences. At Queen’s University Belfast, he has held posts as Director of Education, Director of Research and Head of School. In 2012 he was appointed Professor of Sonic Arts at Queen’s and awarded the Northern Bank’s ‘Building Tomorrow’s Belfast’ prize. He has recently been awarded two major grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council including interdisciplinary project ‘Sounding Conflict’, investigating relationships between sound, music and conflict situations. Pedro has been appointed Director of SARC in 2021 and has led the centre’s 20th anniversary celebration and re-launch as SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music in 2024. Pedro is also Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

BlackGate

Thursday 3rd April 2025 - 6pm

The Studio, National Concert Hall

Ed Bennett Strange Waves (Part I) for solo cello

Lavinia Meijer Atmospheric Rivers for solo harp

Ann Cleare Gravity Dreams for double bass & cello (premiere)

Caimin Gilmore BlackGate

Kate Ellis cello

Caimin Gilmore double bass

Lavinia Meijer harp

Cormac Curran DX7

Programme Notes

This programme of contemporary works culminates in Caimin Gilmore’s BlackGate. A limited number of 10” pre-sale vinyl will be available, exclusively for audiences at New Music Dublin, ahead of the work’s general release on Ten Spot Records (IRL) & New Amsterdam Records (USA), 1 August 2025. BlackGate was written for double bass, cello, harp and DX7.

It had its premiere at Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 2024 and now comes to Dublin for the first time. BlackGate is a cross-genre piece and reflection of his work, performing and recording across multiple genres with a broad range of ensembles, from contemporary music to pop, classical and folk.

Ed Bennett Strange Waves: I

A large-scale work in six parts, ‘Strange Waves’ blends music for eight cellos with field recordings made on the County Down coast and on Ireland’s northernmost island, Rathlin, in the North Atlantic. The music unfolds with an extraordinary sense of inevitability: dense constellations of rapid figures evolve into rich, swirling synth-like textures. Ravishing microtonal sonorities overlap hypnotically with the steady pulse of lapping waves. Surreal chorales are revealed slowly, deliberately – at once mysterious and reassuringly, uncommonly elegant.

Kate Ellis will perform Part I only.

Lavinia Meijer Atmospheric Rivers

During one of the events at Philip Glass’s festival in California, I found out about the nature phenomenon called Atmospheric Rivers. They are narrow bands of water vapor in the atmosphere, like a river; that take moisture from the ocean and dump massive amounts of rain. Scientists have predicted that the climate crisis will cause bigger and nastier atmospheric rivers in the future. Lavinia Meijer.

Ann Cleare Gravity Dreams I

Imagine the cello and double bass as waves that diverge and unite. Through their undulating motions, they assemble a more solid material, what is thought of as a vertebrae, from which new and dormant waves surface. Is it a dream about gravity or is gravity dreaming? Ann Cleare.

Biographies

Caimin Gilmore

Caimin Gilmore is a double bassist and composer. He is a member of contemporary classical groups Crash Ensemble and s t a r g a z e.

He has performed and/or recorded with a wide range of recording artists such as Damon Albarn, Adam Cohen (on Leonard Cohen’s Thanks for the Dance), Greg Saunier, Aaron Dessner, Boy Genius, Bernard Butler, Lisa Hannigan, Lisa O’Neill, Ye Vagabonds, John Francis Flynn, Jessie Buckley.

‘Caimin Gilmore’s upright bass-playing was reminiscent of Danny Thompson’s work, fluid and sunlit.’ - The Spectator

‘Fabulous playing by Caimin Gilmore.’ - Journal of Music

Kate Ellis

Kate Ellis is Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble, cellist with Martin Hayes’ Common Ground Ensemble and has toured with Bono as part of his Stories of Surrender show. Recent projects include the Irish premiere of Philip Glass’ cello concerto Naqoyqatsi with the Philip Glass Ensemble

and the National Symphony Orchestra, orchestral arrangements for Martin Hayes and the NSO, the release of a major new work for solo cello by Northern Irish composer Ed Bennett on the Ergodos label, curation of a contemporary music series ‘Europe: Here and Now’ at the National Concert Hall, Dublin and the creation of new music in collaboration with the Vernon Spring, Multi-Traction Orchestra, and with UK and US based musicians as part of Brawl Records Echolocation project.

Lavinia Meijer

Lavinia Meijer, an exclusive Sony Classical International Artist, is one of the most versatile harpists of our time. After her debut at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2007, she has been regularly invited to perform as a soloist in Europe, Asia and America, including Carnegie Hall New York, Berlin Philharmonie, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center and Musikverein Vienna.

Her intense, groundbreaking renditions of music by Philip Glass have mesmerised audiences across the world. After meeting him in 2011, he gave her permission to transcribe his work Metamorphosis for harp. Since then she has transcribed various Glass works, including Opening Piece, movements from The Hours, Etudes and the main theme from Koyaanisqatsi. As well as performing onstage with Glass and participating alongside him in interviews, he has invited her several times to perform at Carnegie Hall and at his Days and Nights Festival at the Big Sur in California. She has also collaborated and shared the stage with Ludovico Einaudi, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Ólafur Arnalds and Sufjan Stevens. Her albums are released worldwide (Channel Classics, Sony Classics) and have been awarded Edison Awards and platinum status.

Corman Curran

Over the last 10 years, Cormac has built a formidable reputation as a keyboardist and arranger, both domestically in Ireland and on the international stage, having performed on five platinum selling No. 1 albums, two as orchestral arranger as well as keyboardist. Credits include keyboardist: Cathy Davey – Tales of Silversleeve (2007), The Nameless (2010); keyboardist and arranger: Villagers – Becoming a Jackal (2010), {Awayland} (2013); additional arrangements: Villagers – Darling Arithmetic (2015).

Additional accolades include three Mercury Prize nominations (2010, 2013 and 2015, the latter for performing on SOAK’s debut album), four Choice Music nominations, winning in 2014 with Villagers, an Ivor Novello (Villagers), and many more internationally renowned awards and honours. The extensive list of artists that he has worked with includes John Grant, Villagers, Lisa Hannigan, SOAK, Cathy Davey and more.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Blood of A Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète)

Thursday 3rd April 2025 - 7.30pm

Main Stage, National Concert Hall, Dublin

Matthew Nolan / Erik Friedlander The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète)

Matthew Nolan electric guitar / electronics

Erik Friedlander cello

Seán Mac Erlaine piano / electronics

Lisa Dowdall viola / viola d’amore

Introduced by Dr Alexandra Lukes (Department of French, TCD)

Programme Notes

The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète), the first part of Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy, is considered one of the finest surrealist films ever made. Enter this extraordinary world in a special presentation that features the world premiere of a new score co-written and performed by Erik Friedlander and Matthew Nolan, joined by special guests Seán Mac Erlaine and Lisa Dowdall and introduced by Dr Alexandra Lukes of Trinity College Dublin.

Cocteau wrote that this film marks ‘a descent into oneself … a kind of half-sleep through which I wandered as though in a labyrinth.’ He approached the movie screen as ‘the true mirror reflecting the flesh and blood of [his] dreams’. Told in four parts, The Blood of a Poet begins with an artist in his studio speaking to a living statue, then stepping through a mirror into another realm.

While its images and set pieces are dense with interpretive possibilities, the film is understood as a kind of subversive autobiography and an exploration of the relationship between creator

and creation. It is a fascinating souvenir of a vanished avant-garde, featuring the only on-screen performance by photographer Lee Miller.

Biographies

Matthew Nolan

Matthew Nolan is a Dublin based musician, composer, academic and curator. He has produced new work in collaboration with some of the finest musicians around, both Irish and international. They include Adrian Crowley, Sean Mac Erlaine, Lisa Hannigan, Ernst Reijseger, Rachel Grimes, Jeff Ballard, Iarla O’Lionaird, Chris Brokaw, Erik Friedlander, Stephen Shannon, Kevin Murphy, Jan Bang, Eivind Aarset, Barry Adamson and many, many more.

He has worked on commissions from a range of prestigious performing arts institutions, including National Gallery of Ireland, BAM and Film at Lincoln Centre in New York, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Kilkenny Arts Festival, Bram Stoker Festival, and the St Patrick’s Festival. His most recent projects were presented at MoLI in Dublin as part of their Ulysses centenary project and at the New York Film Festival. 2025 will see the release of Pomes Penyeach by Universal Music, produced in collaboration with Adrian Crowley and based on James Joyce’s short book of poetry.

Erik Friedlander

Cellist Erik Friedlander is a prolific solo artist, bandleader and film composer. Having been a sought-after studio musician and improviser in New York’s downtown music scene for years, Friedlander has recently become well known for his work scoring film and television. He most recently scored the film Baby Ruby in 2022. In the fall of 2018, he scored an episode of Matthew Weiner’s (Mad Men) show The Romanoffs. In 2017, Friedlander composed the score for Thoroughbreds, a feature film directed by Cory Finley, which garnered critical acclaim. Also in 2017, he scored the film Oh Lucy!, directed by Atsuko Hirayanagi, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival.

Erik has released She Sees which was recorded in January 2023 with Ava Mendoza (guitar), Stomu Takeishi (bass), and Diego Espinoza (drums). In 2018, Erik released A Queens’ Firefly with his quartet The Throw. Firefly was Friedlander’s 23rd record under his own name. Erik has also composed music for ads, dance, and documentaries and scored the feature film Future Weather. Since the start of 2018, Friedlander has been releasing an original track for free each month. Friedlander has performed and recorded with artists as diverse as The Mountain Goats, John Zorn, Dave Douglas and Courtney Love.

Seán Mac Erlaine

Seán Mac Erlaine is an Irish musician and composer specialising in woodwinds and electronics. He studied jazz performance under Ronan Guilfoyle in Newpark Music Centre, where he also taught for a number of years before completing his formal education at Dublin Institute of Technology, where he was awarded a Masters in Jazz Performance as well as a PhD focusing on solo woodwind performance with live electronics. He plays alto saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet, which he often processes through software created with Max/MSP. He has performed with leading musicians including Jan Bang, Bill Frisell, David Toop, Ernst Reijseger, The Smith

Quartet, Hayden Chisholm, Eivind Aarset, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Ronan Guilfoyle, Iarla O’Lionaird, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Damo Suzuki and The Gloaming. Mac Erlaine has released two solo albums on Irish record label Ergodos. The Irish Times describes Mac Erlaine as ‘consistently one of the most interesting and adventurous musicians of his generation.’

Lisa Dowdall

Born in Dublin, Lisa Dowdall is one of Ireland’s most innovative and versatile musicians. As member of Crash Ensemble, Lisa has collaborated with artists such as Dawn Upshaw, Iarla O’Lionard, Sam Amidon and Gavin Friday, and has premiered works written for the Crash Ensemble by Terry Riley, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Nico Muhly and Donnacha Dennehy. In addition to her teaching position at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Lisa is an Arts Council Creative Associate.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland/French Embassy

BAN BAM New Works premiere

Thursday 3rd April 2025 - 9.30pm

The Complex Arts Centre, Smithfield, Dublin 7

Christine Tobin Pseudologia Fantastica (2025) (world premiere)

Joanna Mattrey Battle Ready II (2025) (world premiere)

Christine Tobin voice, keys

Kate Shortt cello

Joanna Mattrey viola

Larissa O’Grady violin

Nick Roth saxophone

Simon Jermyn bass

Programme Notes

Launched in 2020 to support and highlight the work of female and gender diverse composers in jazz and improvised music in Ireland, BAN BAM is a commissioning and development award from Improvised Music Company (IMC), the leading resource and promoter for jazz and improvised music in Ireland, www.improvisedmusic.ie. The 2025 recipients of the award, composers Joanna Mattrey and Christine Tobin, are celebrated on this programme, which comprises world premieres of their new commissioned works.

Christine Tobin’s new work Pseudologia Fantastica explores themes of disinformation, and the misappropriation of new technologies and information networks to spread lies that destroy democratic conversation, undermining our perceptions of the world. In the history of

communication, we have never been so connected—yet we often find ourselves divided, mistrustful and weighed down by dark uncertainty about the future. Presented by Tobin with accompaniment by cellist Kate Shortt, the piece includes spoken word and song. Of this collaboration, Christine has said, ‘BAN BAM gives me the opportunity to present new work that marks a new direction in my creative life, and it’s a good feeling to be part of a commission that has diversity and innovative creativity at its core.’

With themes of conflict, loss of home and cultural identity, Joanna Mattrey’s Battle Ready II asks that the performers play for those who have no voice. The work includes composition, improvisation, spoken text and video, and features a central quartet of saxophone, violin, viola and synths. Joanna Mattrey performs alongside Nick Roth, Larissa O’Grady and Simon Jermyn, drawing on their fluency in improvisation and notated music, while oscillating between coordinated written events and sweeping improvised textures and gestures to create a powerful live experience. Of this commission, Joanna says, ‘I am deeply honoured and grateful to receive the Ban Bam Commission to present my new piece, Battle Ready II, at New Music Dublin! It is such a vital opportunity that helps correct gender imbalances in the improvisation community and grows access and inclusivity for artists. Thanks so much to IMC for the powerful initiative.’

Biographies

Christine Tobin

Christine is a Dublin-born vocalist and composer, who has been an integral part of the Irish, London and New York City jazz scenes for many years. She returned to Ireland in 2020 and is now based in Co. Roscommon. Her authentic sound has been described in The Guardian as ‘Tobin’s 24-carat voice’ while praising her for both the poetry of her compositions and the warmth of her golden voice. Her style, although rooted in jazz, is eclectic and draws on a broad range of influences.

Joanna Mattrey

Joanna is a violist and composer working in free improvisation, new music and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centred on ceremony and ritual.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Córas Trio

Thursday 3rd April 2025 - 11pm

The Cooler, Smithfield, Dublin 7

Conor McAuley drums, percussion

Paddy McKeown guitar, electronics

Kevin McCullagh fiddle, electronics

Programme Notes

Córas Trio presents a selection of Irish traditional music as a starting point to explore acoustic and electronic sound-worlds, stretching and compressing time, breaking down melodies to their atomic core while freely improvising in a three-way dialogue.

‘Our aim is to be free and unafraid in the deconstruction of the genre, while at the same time creating music that an audience can connect with on a deeply emotional level.’

This Dublin performance sees the Trio play music from their highly acclaimed eponymous debut album, as well as new material scheduled for a 2025 release. This is Irish traditional music taken to the outer reaches, where the spirits of Schoenberg and Sun Ra play with Seán Ó Riada and Tommie Potts.

Biography

Córas Trio reinvent the spontaneous. They are part of a new creative wave of musicians based in Belfast exploring how traditional music relates to the experience of the 21st century. Challenging ideas of cultural purism, they are unafraid and unapologetic in their radical reshaping of contemporary Irish music practice.

Traditional melodies weave in and out of compelling textures that foreground fiddle, guitar and percussion with transcendental electronics, suspending elements of collective free improvisation with seisiuìn style playfulness.

Forward, compassionate, diverse and all-encompassing empathy is what drives the direction of their identities, emerging through their roots in the Irish tradition, electronic music, and contemporary improvisational music scenes.

2024 saw Córas Trio appear on NTS Radio, BBC Radios 3 and 6, RTÉ Irish Radio, Jazz FM and PBS Australia to name but a few, as well as features in The Wire Magazine, Mojo, Jazzwise, Psychedelic Baby, Folk London and The Goo Dublin. They have performed at EFG London Jazz Festival, WOMEX and Celtic Connections.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

POWER PLAY

Friday 4th April 2025 - 1pm

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

Laura Bowler/Sam Redway POWER PLAY (2024)

Philip Venables/Ted Huffman

My favourite piece is the Goldberg Variations (2021)

Andreas Borregaard accordion

Programme Notes

An accordionist with a mask; a life told through other voices. Who is in control? And of what? Commedia dell’arte meets AI meets storytelling meets classical accordion: Danish accordionist Andreas Borregaard presents two new works written for him as part of his ongoing exploration of what it means to be a performer of contemporary music.

POWER PLAY by Laura Bowler & Sam Redway is a playful yet challenging examination of class, money and power, drawing on the traditions of the Commedia dell’arte. Andreas Borregard as Zanni finds himself in a space of almost no control, no worth, and desperation. He is confronted by a powerful voice that presents as human… But is it?

My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations by Philip Venables & Ted Huffman is based on interviews with Susanne Borregaard, mother of accordionist Andreas Borregaard, conducted during the summer lockdown of 2020. Andreas approached Philip about writing a piece involving extended performativity beyond simply playing the accordion. Philip was drawn to the idea of the accordionist as storyteller, almost in the troubadour sense. They met with writer Ted Huffman in Berlin to speak about Andreas’ own life and work, which in turn led to interviews with his mother over Skype. Philip’s work with Ted often uses verbatim text and this piece continues their exploration of queer histories. From this interview material, they formed 12 snapshots of a life

over seven decades. The piece is dedicated to Susanne Borregaard with great appreciation for her contribution.

Biographies

Andreas Borregaard

Through an extensive career as soloist and chamber musician, Andreas Borregaard communicates the accordion’s fascinating qualities and palette of expressions to a wide audience. He collaborates with composers from all over Europe such as Jennifer Walshe, Bent Sørensen, Maja S. K. Ratkje and Simon Steen-Andersen and is actively influencing the development of this young instrument’s use and repertoire. In 2018 Borregaard released his acclaimed recording of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on BIS Records and in 2022 he was appointed accordion professor at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover.

Laura Bowler

Laura Bowler, described as ‘a triple threat composer-performer provocatrice’, is a composer, vocalist and artistic director specialising in theatre, multidisciplinary work and opera. She has been commissioned across the globe by ensembles and orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, ROH2, Opera Holland Park, The Opera Group, Manchester Camerata, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini (Canada), Ensemble Phace (Austria), Ensemble Linea (France), Omega Ensemble (Australia) and others.

Recent projects include: FFF, for Ensemble Phace (Vienna) and vocalist (herself), a music theatre work commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and HCMF; Feminine Hygiene, a multimedia work for large ensemble and vocalist, herself, commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and Sounds from the Other City Festival; Damned Mob of Scribbling Women, a 20-minute music theatre song cycle for leading UK new music vocalist Lucy Goddard, recently nominated for a British Composer Award; Antarctica, a 50-minute multimedia work for orchestra and Laura as vocalist, co-commissioned by Manchester Camerata and BBC Radio 3.

Upcoming projects include a music theatre work based on Rumpelstiltskin for Riot Ensemble with librettist Alasdair Middleton; and a new multimedia work for multidisciplinary group, Decoder Ensemble for HCMF 2020; a multimedia work for composer/pianist Zubin Kanga; as well as new smaller scale works for Vocalist Alwynne Pritchard and Nyckelharpist, Robert Bentall. Laura is a Lecturer in Composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Royal Northern College of Music. She is represented by Rayfield Allied.

Philip Venables

Collaborative composer Philip Venables is described as ‘an arrestingly original musical personality’ by Alex Ross in The New Yorker and as ‘one of the finest composers around’ by The Guardian. Philip’s work is often about storytelling. Philip’s previous music-theatre works, 4.48 Psychosis (2016), Denis & Katya (2019) and The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions (2023), have been performed by leading companies in London, New York City, Paris, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Manchester, Aix-en-Provence, Dresden, Philadelphia, Hannover and Montpellier. The operas have won the Fedora Prize, an RPS Award, and an Ivor Novello Award, as well as shortlisted nominations for an Olivier Award and Sky Arts South Bank Award. The Times branded 4.48

Psychosis ‘a new brand of opera’ and The New York Times called Denis & Katya ‘an intimate, haunting triumph.’ Philip’s fourth opera, We Are The Lucky Ones premiered at Dutch National Opera in March 2025.

Concert works include Answer Machine Tape, 1987; My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations (Text: Ted Huffman); a series of pieces based on Numbers by poet Simon Howard; several pieces with drag/performance artist David Hoyle (Illusions, Canal Street); and Venables plays Bartók with violinist Pekka Kuusisto for the BBC Proms. Philip’s debut album Below the Belt was released on NMC in 2018: ‘unmissable… music of forensic clarity and visceral force – but also great tenderness and generosity’ (BBC Music Magazine).

Philip has been a fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell, doctoral composer in residence with the Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2014–2016, and elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2016.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

You Heard It First

Friday 4th April 2025 - 2.30pm

The Studio, National Concert Hall, Dublin

Aoife King Dialectic Erosions (world premiere)

Aleksandr Nisse Pleonexia (world premiere)

Cathal O’Riordan 0.5% (world premiere)

Lara Weaver Singing Sands (world premiere)

Tim Doyle Fánaíocht – Topophilia – An Ode to Slow Living (world premiere)

Ryan McAdams conductor

Crash Ensemble

Larissa O’Grady violin

Joanna Mattrey viola

Kate Ellis cello

Malachy Robinson double bass

Susan Doyle flute

Visuals

Leonie Bluett clarinet

Barry O’Halpin electric guitar

Alex Petcu percussion

Eliza McCarthy piano

Casey Trowel trombone

Laura Sheeran (0.5%, Singing Sands, Pleonexia)

Anna Rose Garvey (Fánaíocht – Topophilia – An Ode to Slow Living)

Billy Kemp (Dialectic Erosions)

Francesca DeBuyl Production Manager

Elise Mollé FOH Audio

Dónal Mcninch Lighting/Visuals Operator

Note: While this performance is not specifically designed toward individuals with sensory sensitivities, sensory packages will be available on request for a nominal refundable rental fee.

These packages contain items to help with sensory processing for those with noise or light or other sensitivities.

Programme Notes

Join Crash Ensemble as it performs the world premieres of five new commissions by Crash Works creators Aoife King, Aleksandr Nisse, Cathal O’Riordan, Lara Weaver and Tim Doyle. Crash Works is a commission and development hub for music creators at pivotal stages of their careers, offered in partnership with Crash Ensemble and New Music Dublin. These new works are the culmination of a two-year programme of support, mentoring and development, during which each creator has been given the opportunity to investigate and develop new works.

Aoife King Dialectic Erosions

‘Growing up in North Kerry by the coast near Banna and Ballyheigue beaches, I have a strong love, emotional connection, and many memories attached to the sea. The sea is a source of calm and escape for me and it brings me great comfort, but it is simultaneously a force of nature that we must respect and be wary of for our own safety. Equally, we as humans pose a danger to the sea by means of pollution, overfishing, and climate change. Dialectic Erosions is an exploration of this dichotomy of comfort and threat brought by the sea, drawing on my personal experiences, connections and memories, through a blend of art forms and sounds.

In the first section the ensemble listens to a guided visualisation score to ground themselves, imagining the sea flowing through them and into their instruments. The percussionist bows on a piece of driftwood from Ballyheigue beach, turning the discarded eroded wood into an amplified instrument. Section two has the ensemble follow the direction and movement of the conductor drawing on the perspex, interpreting them through “sounds of the sea”, building in waves. Section three focuses on the erosion and impact the sea has, as the conductor begins to erode the lines the musicians are forced into positions that make their instruments impossible to play. Section four explores a phrase I had drilled into me while undertaking life-saving lessons in the sea growing up: “Keep kicking your legs and keep your head above the water”. As I’ve grown older the meaning of this phrase has continually adapted to meet with the challenges and adversity that life brings.’

Aleksandr Nisse Pleonexia

‘The first movement symbolises the event of growing. The aim was to express the mood of something sacred happening out of the blue. When looking at a simple plant growing for example from its first stage to its last stage, it appears to me as a miracle. It is very clear and unclear at the same time. Each growing process is unique. The piece is conceived as a cycle.

The second is symbolising a whole day of a forest ecosystem starting from dawn. Each little creature has its own function, there are no hierarchies as such. The movement expresses this feature musically. It is conceived as a cycle.

The third movement symbolises potential natural threats the forest might be exposed to (Thunder, Fire…) It is conceived as a cycle. The fourth movement symbolises the interaction between two opposing ecosystems, the forest itself and a profit-oriented ecosystem which is destructive in nature. In ancient Greece this behaviour was called pleonexia.

The piece is not conceived as a cycle as a result, as it is expressing the interrupting of a natural cycle. It is therefore not transmitting a healthy environment for future generations for the benefit of common humanity.’

Cathal O’Riordan 0.5%

‘The piece attempts to explore concepts which are found in the fields of anatomy and pathology. The primary inspiration for the piece comes from the study of human genes, with a particular obsession with the fact that there is maximum 0.5% between any one person’s DNA to another. The melodic material is grown from a Sean-nós version of a traditional English folk song ‘Amhrán na hEascainne’ (Song of the eel). This melodic material slowly mutates and morphs throughout the course of the piece.’

Lara Weaver Singing Sands

‘In the dune seas of the Rub’ al-Khali, the desert sings. Strange sounds emit from giant dunes, humming through the sands, vibrating to the touch. This is a phenomenon that occurs in some sand deserts in the world, when hot sand avalanches down the slip face of giant sand dunes, causing a deep, resonant sound. It is due to granular shear flow, which excites vibrations in the sands and produces an acoustic emission with well-defined frequencies and sustained higher order harmonics, audible in the air from several miles away at its loudest. Witnesses have described the sound akin to the strain of an aeolian harp, the thrum of an organ, the bowing of very low strings, the pealing of large bells, and, at its loudest, as the roll of drums, the clatter of artillery fire, or the rumble of distant thunder.

Singing Sands, written for Crash Ensemble, is composed from my field recordings of the singing sand dunes of the Rub’ al-Khali (Empty Quarter) desert in the Arabian Peninsula. The piece attunes to these unusual sounds through composed materials derived from my recording of a dune singing in late afternoon. Just as the sound of the dunes has been most often described by likening it to different instrumental timbres, I was curious: how might a stringed instrument “sing” like sand, or a trombone “boom” like a dune? How can a group of musicians tune in to the resonance of the desert? Specific instrumental effects and musical gestures prompt members of the ensemble to engage with the dune’s harmonic and timbral characteristics, illuminating latent aspects.

The broader expressive gestures of the piece are then inspired by the sentiments I have observed towards the singing dunes: to those who live in the desert here, the sound is a curiosity, a warning or a sign of something ominous, something that inspires awe and spiritual significance, but also a sound that has come to mean a place to gather peacefully (for it is difficult to sneak up on someone when the sand booms from your footsteps).

In the vast quiet of the deep desert, the singing of the sands invites a slow listening, attuning to the sounds of the earth, holding space for what might emerge.’

Tim Doyle Fánaíocht – Topophilia – An Ode to Slow Living

‘“Topophilia” is defined as the affective bond with one’s environment, a person’s mental, emotional and cognitive ties to a place, its environment and culture; “fánaíocht” is an Irish term that roughly translates as an act of rambling, exploring or aimless wandering in a place. Both terms are connected to a way of living that seeks a closer bond with our immediate surroundings. In an increasingly media-driven world, where we seek “connection” through monitors and screens, fewer and fewer people have tangible lifeway relationships to the places in which they live.

This piece aims to capture an aural perspective of life in a contemporary urban environment in Ireland. Drawing on the sound of the indigenous uilleann pipes as the main fulcrum, this piece explores how our immediate environmental factors can weave their way into traditions, suggesting new approaches to an age-old tradition, in a way that is both sensitive to its established

conventions but is also informed by contemporary life. Much like ecological diversity is key to a sustainable ecosystem, cultural diversity and new approaches to age-old traditions are key to their sustainability.

The piece is an exploration of the uilleann pipes, and some aspects of standard practice have been repurposed. The drones have been detuned to an “out of tune” F-sharp minor chord (instead of the usual D in three separate octaves). A bespoke tuning system has been developed around this, using elements of the harmonic series, such as the major 6th, D quarter-sharp flattened 7th harmonic, E natural as well as flattened 4th scale, B. These pitches are used as key reference points throughout the piece, as clouds of timbre and texture drift in and out, underpinned by a continuous drone. The harmonies straddle a fine line between consonance and dissonance that convey the sense of harmonic wandering and exploration.’

Biographies

Ryan McAdams

Equally at home in the world of opera, symphonic repertoire and contemporary music, American conductor Ryan McAdams has established a presence on both sides of the Atlantic. A contemporary music advocate, Ryan is the Principal Conductor of Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s foremost contemporary music group. Together they regularly perform at the National Concert Hall’s New Music Dublin Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Following the revival and tour of Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s latest opera The First Child for Irish National Opera, which had been highly successful at the Galway International Arts Festival, Signum has recorded the production and the CD is due to be released later this season. Together they also premiered The Second Violinist by Dennehy/Walsh and took the opera to the Barbican in London and to Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.

After spending the summer leading Saratoga Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, Ryan returns to the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, followed by conducting Beatrice and Benedict at the Irish National Opera. Throughout the 2024/25 season he will deepen his relationships with various Italian orchestras and the pianist Mikhail Pletnev. His collaboration with Crash Ensemble will continue to realise exciting projects throughout the season.

Ryan was the first-ever recipient of both the Sir Georg Solti Emerging Conductor Award and the AspenGlimmerglass Prize for Opera Conducting. He was a Conducting Fellow at Tanglewood and an Assistant Conductor at the Aspen Music Festival. The post of Apprentice Conductor at Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival was created for him. As a Fulbright scholar, he served as Apprentice Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, assisting then-Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert. Ryan studied at The Juilliard School and Indiana University. When Ryan is not travelling, he lives in Brighton, UK, with his wife, the dancer and theatre artist Laura Careless, and their son.

Aoife King

Aoife King is an experimental composer and multidisciplinary artist based in county Cork. She completed her Bachelor of Music Degree in MTU Cork School of Music in 2022 and is currently undergoing a Master of Arts in Composition there, studying under Dr Andrew Ingamells. Through her practice Aoife has developed a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to composition that combines her skills in multiple art forms to create unique ways of communicating with audiences.

Aleksandr Nisse

Aleksandr Nisse, Titular Organist of St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, is of Russian and French descent and was influenced by prominent blind musicians such as Helmut Walcha and Danielle Salvignol-Nisse. After studying piano with Valery Krol, he trained in organ with Susan Landale in Paris and Louis Robilliard at the Conservatoire National de Region de Lyon, where he earned the “Premier Prix de Perfectionnement” with distinction. He later studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Nicolas Kynaston and Lionel Rogg.

Nisse regularly performs across Ireland, Switzerland, France, and Germany, and is working on a PhD in composition from TU Dublin. His research focuses on the harmonic series, and his recording of Messiaen’s Ascension earned critical acclaim. As a composer, he has written for Hochschule der Künste Bern and Crash Ensemble, with notable works including áiséirí (2019) and NOTINTUNE, which explores the impact of digital distractions on society. Other compositions, like The Eve of St Agnes and Francis Bacon’s Studio, were premiered in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery in 2022.

Cathal O’Riordan

Cathal is an Irish-born musician in training whose influences range from electronic dance music and rock to choral and contemporary classical music. Cathal is attempting to understand how his wide range of influences can be blended to create a unique artistic voice. Cathal is fascinated by both acoustic and electronic textures, and is particularly interested in how these two sources can mold together to create a sound world that is distinct to him.

Lara Weaver

Lara Weaver is a composer and researcher currently undertaking a PhD at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. Her output includes orchestral, choral, chamber music, song, electroacoustic music and installation works; recent premieres include works at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sonorities Festival and BBC Proms. Lara graduated with a First from St John’s College, Cambridge, with a BA in Music, after which she continued to an MPhil in Composition, which was awarded with Distinction.

Tim Doyle

Tim Doyle is a composer, uilleann piper/multi-instrumentalist and music educator from Dublin. As a composer/performer he has collaborated with musicians, composers, theatre and film directors, visual artists, synesthetes, actors, dancers and choreographers across a wide range of genres and for audiences as young as two weeks old.

His compositional output explores the intersections between his background as a traditional musician with sounds and techniques used in contemporary composition. More recently his work has started to incorporate more electronic and electroacoustic elements, including the use of field recordings in both a stand-alone recorded format and as a tape element for live performance. His 2023 work RETUNING THE DRONES explored early 20th-century wax cylinder recordings of uilleann piper Patsy Touhey. Aside from his work as a composer and performer, Tim is a passionate music educator, having worked with Music Generation Wicklow since 2014 and at the Bray Institute of Further Education since 2020 where he lectures in music theory and performance practice.

Crash Ensemble

Siân Cunningham CEO • Kate Ellis Artistic Director • Pete Deane Ensemble Manager • Louise Barker Marketing Lead

Crash Ensemble is Ireland’s leading new music ensemble: a group of world-class musicians who play the most adventurous, groundbreaking music of today. Led by cellist and Artistic Director, Kate Ellis and Principal Conductor, Ryan McAdams, the ensemble commissions, explores, investigates and experiments with a broad spectrum of music creators and artistic collaborators. It also puts community at the centre of its mission, and enjoys creating experiences – exploring new ways of presenting music and taking audiences on new adventures. Many well-known artists from diverse musical backgrounds have performed with the ensemble, including Terry Riley, Gavin Friday, Dawn Upshaw, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Laurie Anderson, Lisa Hannigan, Íarla Ó Lionáird, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, Sam Amidon and Beth Orton.

As well as performing throughout Ireland, Crash regularly performs internationally, with appearances in the last few years at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Tech, GAIDA Festival and residencies at The Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival and Princeton University.

The ensemble’s music is available on their own label, Crash Records and they have recordings on Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, NMC, Ergodos and Bedroom Community labels.

For further details, visit: www.crashensemble.com/about

Crash Ensemble is strategically funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, revenue funded by Dublin City Council and receives international touring support from Culture Ireland. Crash Ensemble is a resident ensemble at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland, and Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.

Did you know that Crash Ensemble is a not-for-profit organisation and rely heavily on funders and donors to do the work they do? If you haven’t checked it out yet, please explore their Crash Circle and consider becoming a friend of Crash: www.crashensemble.com/support

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland/Dublin City Council

Dublin Fixations

Friday 4th April 2025 - 4.30pm

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

John Butcher Dublin Fixations

John Butcher’s Fluidities Ensemble

John Butcher saxophones, pre-recordings, composition

Angharad Davies violin

dieb13 turntables

Ståle Liavik Solberg drums

Sophie Agnel piano

Isabelle Duthois voice & clarinet

Lina Andonovska flutes

Colm O’Hara trombone

Aonghus McEvoy guitar

Alan Niblock double bass

David Lacey drums & percussion

David Donohoe synthesiser

Programme

Notes

In John Butcher’s Dublin Fixations, the musicians bring their own, very personal languages into a composition based on what Butcher calls psychological orchestration: a process of imagining how particular musicians might respond to particular directives, in this work combining precise notation, text, imagery, instructions and pre-recordings. The latter are new pieces that use ‘closemiking’ to manipulate some of the ‘hidden’ sound possibilities of the saxophone. These are then cut to vinyl and manipulated live by turntablist dieb13.

Fluid Fixations was commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival for a performance in 2021. Dublin Fixations is a new version of this multifaceted composition for improvisers, featuring six members of John Butcher’s original group and six Irish musicians new to the work.

Dublin Fixations naturally moves between small-scale, highly individual combinations and the orchestral totality of these collective forces, aiming to create a coherent structure and sense of unity that still encourages improvisation, so that the musicians engage with the mystery of the work’s internal logic in the spontaneity of the moment.

Biographies

Fluid Fixations

‘They create an extraordinarily wide range of sounds across the eight-movement piece’s running time, from deep bass drones like a wooden ship’s hold creaking, to rattling waves of percussion, to electronics that crackle and swoop to vocal interjections, coughs and squawks, to horns that rise up and cry out like a Greek chorus bemoaning some tragedy…’ The Wire www.johnbutcher.org.uk/ fluid-fixations.html

John Butcher

Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.

Butcher originally studied physics, but after publishing a PhD (1982) in quantum chromodynamics, Butcher left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades. To name a few: Derek Bailey, Akio Suzuki, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Sophie Agnel, Rhodri Davies, Matthew Shipp, Gerry Hemingway, Chris Burn, Polwechsel, Magda Mayas, Gino Robair, Thermal (Andy Moor and Thomas Lehn), Christian Marclay, Eddie Prévost, Okkyung Lee, John Russell and Phil Minton. Butcher values both permanent groups and occasional encounters and operates within a network of artists also interested in the dynamics of spontaneity and shared history. Butcher has received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation award for Composers (2011).

https://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/biog.html

‘In the hands of London improvisor John Butcher, the saxophone can sound like anything, from a piece of hollowed out brass baubled with pads and valves to a hermetically sealed feedback system, a miniature sound environment teeming with ever-evolving note-forms, or a huge echo chamber inflicting dub scale damage on every breath.’ The Wire

‘English saxophonist John Butcher has been operating at the cutting-edge of improvisatory practice since the ‘80s. Whenever an acoustic musician starts to sound like a bank of oscillators, a tropical forest, a brook or an insect factory, Butcher’s influence is likely nearby.’ New York City Jazz Record

‘Extraordinarily powerful, Butcher’s saxophone may test the limits of one’s ear to make sense of the close and complex relationships that are put forth, but there’s an undeniable emotional depth and sheer beauty in his work that supersedes technicality and concept.’ Tiny Mix Tapes

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

National Symphony Orchestra: Buckley, Pärt, Chin

Friday 4th April 2025 - 7.30pm

Main Stage, National Concert Hall

John Buckley Clarinet Concerto (world premiere, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and New Music Dublin)

Arvo Pärt Symphony No. 3

Unsuk Chin Piano Concerto

National Symphony Orchestra

Olari Elts conductor

Carol McGonnell clarinet

Andrew Zolinsky piano

Programme Notes

John Buckley Clarinet Concerto (2024)

‘As a composer, I have always been fascinated by the characteristic qualities of different musical instruments. As a result, I have composed a large number of pieces for individual solo instruments, which generally play only one note at a time: flute, saxophone, horn, violin, viola, cello as well as piano, organ, guitar, harpsichord and harp, all of which, of course, have harmonic along with melodic options. On the other hand, the possibilities of the modern symphony orchestra, with its virtually endless range of sonority, harmony and texture has always greatly appealed to me.

It seemed inevitable that at some stage, I would combine these interests and compose a series of concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. The current Clarinet Concerto is the sixth in the series: the earlier concertos are Organ Concerto (1992), Saxophone Concerto (1997), Bassoon Concerto (2001), Flute Concerto (2006) and Violin Concerto (2008). In each case, I have sought to find the individual character of the solo instrument and to place it in a dialogue or landscape within the surrounding orchestral context.

The Clarinet Concerto was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and New Music Dublin and was completed in 2024. The work follows convention in that it is in three movements but the standard ordering is different. A slow tranquil opening, coloured by the sonorities of tuned percussion, celesta and harp sets the dialogue between soloist and orchestra in motion. The elaborate style of writing for the soloist frequently evokes similar gestures from the orchestra before the movement fades into the quietness with which it began.

In the fast second movement, three large-scale virtuosic statements by the solo clarinet are enclosed and separated by brass fanfares. The fleetness of the solo part is offset by the weightier and more dramatic writing for brass and timpani.

The final movement is slow and expressive with the mellow sonority of the marimba frequently acting as a sort of echo of the solo clarinet. Figurations in wind and brass pairs, bassoons, oboes, flutes, trumpets and trombones, emerge and dissolve into the texture, while the strings create a rich harmonic web, within all of which the wide-ranging solo clarinet part weaves its way.

Clarinet Concerto is dedicated to this evening’s soloist, the amazing clarinettist Carol McGonnell.’

- John Buckley

Arvo

Pärt

Third Symphony (1971)

By the time Credo was composed in 1968, Pärt had come to the conclusion that the musical means he had been using so far had exhausted themselves. The composer then delved into early music because it was in Gregorian chant, early polyphony and polyphonic music from the Renaissance that he had previously found his musical examples, ideal sound combinations and techniques. This became the starting point for his eight-year period of searching for a unique musical language.

This silence was broken by Symphony No. 3, one of the first works that was considerably different from his earlier compositions and heralded Pärt’s new creative principles. The three movements of the composition follow each other attacca (i.e. without any break). The composer’s interest in monody and early polyphony is clearly visible here. The harmonic and melodic material brings to mind choir music from the 14th and 15th centuries, even though Pärt does not use any quotations. The polyphonic development in all movements of the piece do not emphasise the atmosphere from behind centuries, but rather, translate the thematic material into contemporary musical language.

In Symphony No. 3 Pärt aimed to apply the notion of the movement of independent voices, imagining the entire structure of the composition as a metaphor for building a city.

Arvo Pärt: ‘Small, increasingly numerous centres that spread out until they touch each other and form a unity. The same thing happens with the harmonic progression in the piece that is evolved from a series of short cadences. Upon this idea is based the idea of polyphonic complexity. I had succeeded in building a bridge within myself between yesterday and today – a yesterday that was several centuries old – and this encouraged me to go on exploring.’

Symphony No. 3 is dedicated to Neeme Järvi, who conducted the Estonian Television and Radio Symphony Orchestra at the premiere of the symphony at Estonia Concert Hall in Tallinn on 21 September 1972.

© The Arvo Pärt Centre

Unsuk Chin Piano Concerto

‘Following my first three etudes for piano, this is my second major work for piano – an instrument which has fascinated me since the age of four. This composition reflects the influences of every epoch in piano literature - from Scarlatti to the present. I wanted to emphasize particularly the vitality, kinetic and virtuoso aspects - in short, the playful side - of the piano. The solo part shows no evidence of the Romantic tradition, where the brilliant solo line is merely accompanied by the orchestra. Here every orchestral part has an important function.

The four movements each have a very distinctive character. A common feature, however, is that none has a predetermined structure. Each movement develops spontaneously from a common cell, where simple rules produce highly complex, unpredictable results.

First movement: a prelude to the work. At the beginning there are four motives based on a triad, which - like a puzzle - are put together geometrically. These passages are interrupted by faraway sounds, which gradually increase in volume and importance. These varying layers of sound also have varying rhythmic patterns. At the end of the movement a rhythmic motif previously introduced in the percussion section is taken over by the piano and transformed into a virtuoso display by the soloist, exploring all the sonorities of the instrument. The conclusion consists of a metamorphosis of the beginning of the movement.

The second movement is a tone painting with a virtuoso interlude, which divides the movement into two segments. In the first section numerous layers of sound are introduced, complementing and opposing one another. The interlude presents a marked contrast to the static sonorities at the opening and closing of the movement.

In the third movement 30 markedly differing motives are introduced in mosaic fashion and two constantly recurring tutti chords act as pillars, holding the entire movement together.

In the concluding fourth movement an approximately two-minute long sustained F provides the pedal point for a gradual build-up. The piano has passages that sound improvisatory, with accompanying ostinato. Gradually a rhythmic pattern develops in the strings, eventually veering away from the central pitch of F and changing into short and interlocking motives. The movement concludes with a quasi improvised cadenza for piano, brass and percussion, followed by a typically classical coda.

This concerto was written in the winter of 1996-97, commissioned by the BBC for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.’

- Unsuk Chin

Biographies

National Symphony Orchestra

The National Symphony Orchestra has been at the centre of Ireland’s cultural life for over 75 years. Formerly the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, it was founded in 1948 as the Raidió Éireann Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, the Orchestra transferred from RTÉ to the remit of the National Concert Hall.

Resident orchestra of the National Concert Hall since its opening in 1981, it is a leading force in Irish musical life through year-long programmes of live music – ranging from symphonic, choral and operatic to music from stage and screen, popular and traditional music, and new commissions – alongside recordings, broadcasts on RTÉ and internationally through the European Broadcasting Union. Schools concerts, family events, initiatives for emerging artists and composers, collaborations with partner promoters and organisations extend the orchestra’s reach.

As a central part of the National Concert Hall’s 2024-2025 Season, the NSO presents more than 55 performances shared between Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Cork. They include collaborations with international and Irish artists, ensembles and conductors – including a number of events with the National Concert Hall’s Artists-in-Residence: the renowned American musician and composer Bryce Dessner, the internationally acclaimed Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, and the dynamic musician and presenter Jessie Grimes. The programme is rich and varied, presenting repertoire from across the centuries to the present day including world and Irish premieres, choral masterpieces, birthday and anniversary celebrations, family concerts and screenings, schools concerts, and professional initiatives for emerging singers and composers. A focus on nature and the environment is a central part of the season’s programming.

Highlights with the Artists-in-Residence are many. They include three Irish premieres by Bryce Dessner: Mari, his Violin Concerto performed by its dedicatee, Pekka Kuusisto, and his Concerto for Two Pianos performed by Katia and Marielle Labèque, for whom it was written. Tara Erraught performs virtuosic works by Mozart, Haydn and Marianne von Martínez, with historical performance specialist Laurence Cummings conducting, and arias by Mozart, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, with Clelia Cafiero conducting. Tara is also the driving force behind Celebrating the Voice, a week-long professional development programme for young singers which culminates in an opera gala with the NSO conducted by Anu Tali. Jessie Grimes leads immersive, family-friendly concerts including Our Precious Planet and explorations of iconic works: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as part of the ASDfriendly Symphony Shorts, as well as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, featuring new and specially commissioned shadow puppetry, and Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

Other exciting highlights include Dame Sarah Connolly joining conductor Mihhail Gerts for Alma Mahler’s Six Songs; an 80th birthday celebration for conductor Leonard Slatkin which includes the world premiere of his son Daniel’s cosmic journey, Voyager 130; Hugh Tinney performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto; Speranza Scappucci conducting a Ravel Birthday Celebration; John Storgårds conducting Rachmaninov and Shostakovich; Anja Bihlmaier conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; and Ryan McAdams conducting the First Violin Concerto by Philip Glass with NSO Leader Elaine Clark as soloist; and John Luther Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean. Jaime Martín returns to conduct Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto with Yeol Eum Son as the soloist, and former Principal Conductor Gerhard Markson returns for Stanford’s Requiem featuring the National Symphony Chorus and soloists including Máire Flavin and Sharon Carty. World premieres by Ailís Ní Ríain and, as part of Composer Lab, by Amelia Clarkson, Finola Merivale, Barry O’Halpin and Yue Song all feature. Irish premieres include a new orchestral setting of Philip Glass’s film score Naqoyqatsi with the Philip Glass Ensemble; Stephen McNeff’s The Celestial Stranger with

Gavan Ring as soloist; James MacMillan’s St. John Passion with the National Symphony Chorus and Chamber Choir Ireland; and Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá’s Third Symphony.

Additional family events include popular screenings of classic children’s stories by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler – Stick Man and The Snail and the Whale – and Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. Music in the Classroom returns with Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate Music Guide events, and Musical Adventures for Primary School children.

Other concerts include Martin Hayes with the National Symphony Orchestra, a major new collaboration with the renowned Irish fiddle player and composer centring around a reimagining with orchestra of his acclaimed 2023 Peggy’s Dream album; and, in partnership with esk film, in association with Netflix and Silverback Films, Life on Our Planet in Concert, presenting highlights from across the series on a big screen with Lorne Balfe’s dramatic soundtrack performed live to picture; and, in collaboration with Black Bear and A24, the debut screening of the acclaimed film Sing Sing with Artist-in-Residence Bryce Dessner’s score performed live.

Olari Elts

Olari Elts’ passion for distinctive programming rich with invention has earned him much praise on the international music scene. He began his tenure as Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in 2020. Since 2018, he is also Artistic Advisor of the Kymi Sinfonietta.

Olari Elts has appeared as a guest conductor with such orchestras as Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Finnish Radio Symphony, Danish National Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Dublin Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Budapest Festival Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Soloists with whom he collaborates include Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Brett Dean, Isabelle Faust, Alban Gerhardt, Martin Grubinger, Martin Helmchen, Stephen Hough, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, Kari Kriikku, Simone Lamsma, Karita Mattila, Alexander Melnikov, Maxim Rysanov, Baiba Skride, Lara St. John, Simon Trpčeski and Antoine Tamestit.

As a champion of contemporary Baltic composers such as Erkki-Sven Tüür and Heino Eller, Elts has released recordings of Heino Eller’s Symphonic Poems as well as Eller’s Violin Concerto with Baiba Skride and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Also widely celebrated by critics are his Ondine recordings of Erkki-Sven Tüür works with Tapiola Sinfonietta including the Viola Concerto with Lawrence Power, and Tüür’s Symphony No. 5 for electric guitar, orchestra, big band and the accordion concerto Prophecy with the Helsinki Philharmonic. His recording of Brahms arrangements (Glanert, Berio) with Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra also won high praise. Elts’ discography also includes the Borgström and Shostakovich Violin Concertos with Eldbjørg Hemsing and the Wiener Symphoniker under the BIS label, and Poul Ruders Symphony No. 5 with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra by Bridge Records.

Elts has also made his mark in the opera field, having conducted titles such as Eugene Onegin, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Idomeneo, and Berlioz’s La Damnation du Faust. Elts is founder of his contemporary music ensemble, NYYD Ensemble.

Carol McGonnell

Carol McGonnell is a distinguished clarinettist celebrated for her captivating performances and exceptional technique. On the faculty of The Juilliard School, she has forged a dynamic career as a soloist, chamber musician and educator. Known for her expressive interpretations and versatility, McGonnell has performed with leading orchestras and ensembles worldwide, showcasing both classical and contemporary repertoire. Her commitment to expanding the clarinet’s musical boundaries has led her to collaborate with prominent composers and premiere new works. A passionate advocate for music education, she is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of musicians through her teaching and mentorship. carolmcgonnell.com

‘Carol McGonnell’s mesmerizingly insistent clarinet playing…’ The New York Times

Andrew Zolinsky

Andrew Zolinsky’s unique style of programming and his individual interpretations have secured worldwide performances at many prestigious venues and festivals. His work with living composers brings a vivid freshness, energy and passion to his interpretations of music from previous eras.

Though a noted performer of contemporary repertoire, Andrew enjoys performing a wide range of music spanning several musical periods. His concerto repertoire includes Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Gershwin and Barber; he has performed these composers with major orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Concert Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lorraine, and has worked with many distinguished conductors such as Stefan Asbury, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Martyn Brabbins, Baldur Brönnimann, Diego Masson, Andre De Ridder, David Robertson, Ryan McAdams and Pascal Rophé.

Andrew is very closely associated with the music of Unsuk Chin. He has performed her complete Etudes for solo piano on many occasions, including the French (Festival Musica in Strasbourg), London (Wigmore Hall) and Italian (Venice Biennale) premieres. Andrew also gave the London premiere of her Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel HarthBedoya. As part of the BBC’s ‘Total Immersion’ series in 2011, Andrew gave the UK premiere of the Double Concerto with percussionist Owen Gunnell and the London Sinfonietta conducted by Stefan Asbury at the Barbican Centre. loganartsmanagement.com/andrew-zolinsky/

John Buckley

Born in Templeglantine, Co. Limerick in 1951, John Buckley studied flute with Doris Keogh and composition with James Wilson at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His subsequent composition studies were in Cardiff with the Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott and with John Cage.

He has written a diverse range of work, from solo instruments to full orchestra. The list includes numerous commissions, amongst them Concerto for Organ and Orchestra and Campane in Aria for the National Concert Hall, Rivers of Paradise for the official opening of the Concert Hall at the University of Limerick, Maynooth Te Deum for the bicentenary of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and A Mirror into the Light for Camerata Ireland’s inaugural concert and many works for RTÉ, as well as ensembles and individual performers.

John Buckley’s catalogue now extends to over 100 works, which have been performed and broadcast in more than 50 countries worldwide. His compositions have represented Ireland on five occasions at the International Rostrum of Composers and at six International Society of

Contemporary Music festivals. Amongst his awards are the Varming Prize (1977), the Macaulay Fellowship (1978), the Arts Council’s Composers’ Bursary (1982), and the Toonder Award (1991). In 1984 he was elected a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state sponsored academy of creative artists. His music has been recorded on the Anew, Altarus, Black Box, Marco Polo, Lyric FM, Atoll, Celestial Harmonies and Métier labels. He has made numerous broadcasts on music and music education for RTÉ and Lyric FM.

He has been awarded both a PhD and a DMus by the National University of Ireland and was a senior lecturer and associate professor in music at St. Patrick’s, College, Dublin City University between 2001 and 2017. A monograph on his life and work Constellations: The Life and Music of John Buckley by Benjamin Dwyer was published in May 2011 by Carysfort Press. johnbuckleycomposer.com

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

All Earth Once Drowned

Friday 4th April 2025 - 9.30pm

The Complex, Smithfield, Dublin 7

Ed Bennett All Earth Once Drowned (2024)

World premiere - texts by Cherry Smyth

Cherry Smyth text/spoken word

Decibel Ensemble

Ed Bennett conducting/electronics

Xenia Pestova Bennett piano

Kate Ellis cello

Tom Challenger saxophone

Martin Sanderson trombone

Neil McGovern saxophone

Barry O’Halpin guitar

Damien Harron percussion

Steve Davis drums

Programme Notes

‘All Earth Once Drowned is a music and spoken-word work based on the texts of Irish poet Cherry Smyth. The text and music addresses our relationship to the changing environment and particularly our relationship to the sea, with both Cherry and myself having grown up beside it. Cherry performs with the ensemble and her texts are interwoven throughout this 70-minute work.

The composition is in six parts and is performed by nine wonderful musicians all chosen for their unique abilities and energy. All Earth Once Drowned was commissioned by Moving On Music with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Royal College of Music, and the tour is supported by a PRSF Beyond Borders award.’

- Ed Bennett

Biographies

Ed Bennett

Irish composer Ed Bennett’s music is performed and broadcast in over 30 countries in venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican and Southbank Centres and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Over the last 25 years he has created a substantial body of work for a variety of contexts including those for the concert hall, opera, dance, installation and film. Recent highlights include Psychedelia for the RTÉ NSO and Thomas Adès, Ausland for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Reinbert de Leeuw, Song of the Books for Crash Ensemble and five critically-acclaimed portrait discs of his work.

He directs his 10-piece ensemble Decibel, described in The Quietus as ‘blending the coiled concentration of the best post-minimalism with the ferocity and dynamic range of thrash metal.’ His recent portrait CD Psychedelia (2020) was described in The Sunday Times as ‘ebullient, deeply compelling music’ and featured in The New York Times as one of their recommended releases of 2020, whilst The Guardian described his work as ‘unclassifiable, raw-nerve music of huge energy and imagination.’

In 2019 Ed Bennett was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award, the highest honour awarded to an artist from the region. For his body of creative work he received the prestigious Leverhulme Prize for Performing Arts, and his music has been twice shortlisted for the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2024 he was elected to Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland honouring artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland. He is currently a fellow at the Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Bavaria for the 2024/25 season, and is composition professor at the Royal College of Music in London. Future projects include new work for New York’s Bang On a Can Allstars and an evening-length work for singer Michelle O’Rourke.

Decibel Ensemble

Ed Bennett’s 10-piece ensemble, Decibel, explores experimental, energetic, extreme and unusual work which generally exists between, or outside the usual categories. The group plays new music that combines a direct amplified instrumental ensemble sound with electronics, improvisation and a direct, raw energy.

Apart from premiering many works by Ed Bennett, Decibel has worked with a diverse range of subversive composers and artists including Louis Andriessen, Heiner Goebbels, Laurence Crane, Howard Skempton, Michael Finnissy, Joe Cutler and Michael Wolters, commissioning and premiering many new works. The group has also collaborated with artists from different disciplines, including video artists and choreographers.

Since Decibel’s first concert in Belfast in 2003, they have performed in concert halls, libraries, fields, sculptures, schools and art galleries throughout the UK and Ireland to enthusiastic

audiences and critical acclaim. The group’s CD of Ed Bennett’s music My Broken Machines on NMC Records was Time Out Chicago’s No. 1 Contemporary CD of 2011. Their album Togetherness on Diatribe was described by BBC Radio 3 Record Review as ‘thought provoking and highly original, a great record.’

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Commissioned by Moving on Music with support from Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Tour supported by PRSF

In The Dark

Friday 4th April 2025 - 11pm

The Cooler, Smithfield, Dublin

Secret duos from New Music Dublin artists

Programme Notes

Following Improvised Music Company’s Blind Date Jazz series, In the Dark brings together pairs of improvising musicians from across New Music Dublin’s programme for an exploration of intuition, listening and spontaneity. The twist? Neither musicians nor audience have any idea who is performing.

Unknown, unplanned and unseen—this is an encounter in pure improvised sound, entirely improvised by the artists.

In the Dark begins in blackout, with two musicians who have never met before reaching out through their instruments, conversing without seeing, creating music together in the absence of all other senses. The lights gradually rise, and they come face to face with their new improvising partner. Does the musical conversation change?

Please note that this event will take place largely in pitch darkness

Uilleann Pipes, Cello & Gamelan

Saturday 5th April 2025 - 10.30am

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

Peter Moran Beyond Yourself

Abigail Smith Gamuillean

David Bremner Lancaran Ungettable

Traditional, arr. David Bremner Amhrán na Leabhar

David Bremner Shimmering Uncertainty

Cathy Purcell Resonant Flow

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra

Martin Johnson cello

Mark Redmond uilleann pipes

Peter Moran director

Programme Notes

The NCH Gamelan is an orchestra of bronze gongs and metallophones from the island of Java in Indonesia.

In this very special concert for New Music Dublin, these artists will premiere brand-new compositions written especially for the occasion by four very different composers: David Bremner, Peter Moran, and two recent winners of Finding a Voice, the Contemporary Music Centre’s emerging women composers prize, Cathy Purcell and Abigail Smith.

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra is delighted to be joined for this concert by the celebrated uilleann piper Mark Redmond, and the principal cellist of Ireland’s National Symphony Orchestra, Martin Johnson.

Peter Moran Beyond Yourself

‘Diverse ideas came together to form this piece over time... six Indonesian metallophones recently re-tuned in their microtonal scales combine to create the underlying harmonies... the gongs of the gamelan are carefully laid out along the floor... the cello shifts back and forth between the microtonal Indonesian scales and equal-tempered pitches... the modes and ornamentation of its playing are inspired by Indian classical music and melodic references to The Beatles’ Within You Without You (which lends the work its title). Many thanks to cellist Martin Johnson, to whom the work is dedicated.’

Abigail Smith Gamuillean

‘Gamuilleann is an uplifting, melodic work written to celebrate the beautiful and generous sharing of knowledge between the Irish people and the Indonesian people through the medium of music. There are five sections in this work. The players add variations as the work moves through the ‘iråmå’ (varying tempos and levels of complexity). The ensemble can interpret the music using traditional Indonesian ‘garap’ (realisations). Similarly, in Irish traditional music, the player interprets the notes using ornamentation and their own personal style developed from years of performance. Composing a work to be performed by my gamelan colleagues, I wanted to harness their skills and knowledge. I also wanted Mark to add the richness of his expertise to the performance by interpreting the music using Irish traditional ornamentation and techniques. Highlighting the rich traditions of both cultures, Gamuilleann celebrates the skills of the players involved, and the sharing of knowledge, and the ability of music to bring us together to create something truly unique and in the moment.’

David Bremner Lancaran Ungettable, Shimmering Uncertainty

‘These pieces result from reading about two concepts: lagu in gamelan, and Manchán Magan’s idea of quantum Irish. Lagu, as described by Professor Sumarsam, is a hidden melody that can be imagined by the musicians but is never heard, and “quantum Irish” refers to words like crithir and scim that communicate uncertainty about the nature of matter.

I fused these concepts with my fascination for fractals and infinite series eg ‘1 – 1/2 + 1/4 – 1/8 + 1/16 …’, which approaches but never reaches the limit of 1/3 (a subdivision outside the system of 2s) – zooming in but always remaining pixellated.

My two pieces explore these ideas in different ways: lancaran ‘ungettable’ is a composition in a traditional Javanese form, a melody that is then garap’d (realised by the musicians according to traditional methods), and shimmering uncertainty is freer in style, incorporating some of my recent collaborative research with Mark Redmond into the notation of specific venting patterns.’

Traditional,

arr. David Bremner Amhrán na Leabhar

‘This beautiful air was made famous by the 18th-century Irish poet Tomás Rua Ó Súilleabháin, who wrote Amhrán na Leabhar (“The Song of the Books”) after he lost his precious collection of rare books when his boat capsized off the coast of Kerry.’

Cathy Purcell Resonant Flow

Resonant Flow by Cathy Purcell for gamelan and cello is a hypnotic, meditative piece aiming to transport the listener into a dream-like state. Stepping away from the traditional four-note Indonesian gatra to create a swing-like dance feel, the repetitive three-note bass line establishes the meditative trance motif. The piece explores the different timbres of the gamelan by replacing the wooden mallets with soft mallets and omitting the usual dampening of notes while the layering of instruments create interesting textures within the gamelan’s soundscape. The cello’s role aims to interrupt the flow of the gamelan joining in with their own musical conversation, eventually admitting defeat as they get transported into a meditative state.

Biographies

NCH Gamelan Orchestra

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra’s magnificent instruments were presented as a gift to the Irish people by His Royal Highness the Sultan of Yogyakarta in a special ceremony in 2014. The NCH Gamelan Orchestra has performed at major festivals across Ireland and Java, and in 2024 the orchestra celebrated its 10th anniversary year with the release of its debut album, featuring celebrated British jazz trumpeter Byron Wallen.

As an ensemble, the NCH Gamelan Orchestra has performed at numerous festivals in Ireland and in Indonesia, including the 2018 International Gamelan Festival in Java, the 2014 Yogyakarta International Performing Arts Festival, and often at Ireland’s largest music festival, the Electric Picnic. So far, they have released two singles online: Peter Moran’s compositions Bonang Quartet No.1 and Embat, which are available on iTunes and Spotify.

Peter Moran

Composer and director Peter Moran undertook a PhD exploring how different musical cultures influence current trends in all aspects of contemporary composition, from how it is written, which instruments and voices are written for, where it is performed or broadcast, and who is listening. His particular focus was on microtonal music, and the challenges of integrating the instruments, the performers and the notation systems of western music and Javanese gamelan.

In 2012, Peter arranged for Ireland’s National Concert Hall to receive the gift of a newly-built gamelan orchestra from His Royal Highness Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta in Java. At the same time, he was invited to teach gamelan at University College Dublin, thereby helping to establish the first gamelan ensemble in Dublin.

Peter’s music has been performed across Europe, and further afield from America to Indonesia and Japan, by such esteemed performers as the Fidelio Trio, Crash Ensemble, Benjamin Dwyer, Okeanos, Trio Scordatura, the Dublin Laptop Orchestra, Chamber Choir Ireland, and the Juice Vocal

Ensemble. His works have been released on Ergodos Records and Farpoint Recordings. www. petermoranmusic.com/biography.php

Martin Johnson

Martin studied cello at the Royal College of Music, London under the direction of Anna Shuttleworth, a former student of Pablo Casals; Andrew Shulman, then Principal Cello of the Philharmonia Orchestra; and the British soloist Alexander Baillie.

In 2000, Martin joined the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and has been their Section Leader for almost two decades, broadcasting most of the orchestral cello solo repertoire. In 2006 Martin was invited to become a lifetime member of the World Philharmonic Orchestra and is also a regular Guest Principal with the major orchestras in Ireland and the UK. Martin made his Irish debut as a soloist with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in January 2008, performing Saint-Saëns’ Concerto No. 1, and has appeared as soloist with the NSO on more than 20 occasions since then.

Mark Redmond

Mark Redmond lectures in Irish Traditional Music at RIAM and TU Dublin. He is currently a PhD candidate at TU Dublin, and was awarded an Honours Masters in Music Performance from the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in 2013. Prior to this, he received a First-Class Honours Degree at the same institution, where he was awarded the Leo Rowsome Gold Medal for Performance.

Mark has gained a reputation as a performer on the uilleann pipes in a ‘traditional’ sense but also engages with a wide range of diverse genres. He performs and records regularly with the National Symphony and RTÉ Concert Orchestras. Within this context, he has featured in live broadcasts for many historic occasions, including the Papal Mass, Phoenix Park, 2018; the State Commemoration for the centenary of the Easter Rising, Arbour Hill, 2016; the Eucharistic Congress, Croke Park, 2012, and the State Visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland, 2011.

He has premiered works for uilleann pipes and orchestra by Shaun Davey (Hymn to a Setting Sun, Ómós do Liam O’Flynn, 2019, with the NSO at the NCH), Neil Martin (Ólagán, 2016, with Camerata Ireland at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington), and Vincent Kennedy (Where the North Wind Blows, 2014, with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne at Rennes Opera House).

His recording history includes featuring on Na Píobairí Uilleann’s compilation piping album The Rolling Wave in 2012. Two years later, along with organist David Bremner, he recorded L’Air Du Temps/The Spirit of the Times, an album which combines traditional repertoire with music of the French classical organ school. He has featured on albums by singers Christy Moore (Flying Into Mystery, 2021), and Daoirí Farrell (A Lifetime of Happiness, 2019, and The Wedding Above in Glencree, 2023). On the international circuit Mark has toured with Riverdance, Celtic Woman, Celtic Legends, The Irish Memory Orchestra, The Irish Harp Orchestra, and has performed with a host of diverse artists including Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Westlife, Glen Hansard and Declan O’Rourke.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Totally Made Up Orchestra

Saturday 5th April 2025 - 1pm Windmill QTR, Dublin

The Totally Made Up Orchestra Members of the Public (You!)

Brian Irvine composer/director

Programme Notes

A recurring highlight of the NMD programme each year, The Totally Made Up Orchestra is a group like no other—blending composition, improvisation, words, sounds, clothing, random objects, movements, noises, gestures, humour and much head scratching into another unique and captivating performance. This time the Totally Made Up Orchestra is branching out into a new home, in the stunning surroundings of Windmill QTR, with more ideas, more sounds and … more of everything!

Led by composer Brian Irvine, you are encouraged to join in with this ‘beautiful, monster, music machine phenomenon’, the only requirements being a desire to be heard and to make music with others, an open mind and a big, creative heart.

Biographies

Totally Made Up Orchestra

The Totally Made Up Orchestra is an exciting project that invites secondary students and adults to collaborate in creating ambitious new musical works. The orchestra breaks down barriers and embraces creativity in all its forms. The Totally Made-Up Orchestra is all about blending composition, improvisation, and sheer fun. From composing new pieces to performing them, participants experience the transformative power of music first-hand. But it’s not just about the music. Through collaboration and creativity, this project fosters social cohesion, understanding and wellbeing within the Ballina community and beyond. It’s a chance to redefine what music means and who gets to make it.

Brian Irvine

Brian Irvine is an Ivor Novello award winning composer from Belfast. His huge output includes operas, film scores, large scale oratorios, orchestral, ensemble, chamber, solo and dance works as well as games and installations. Often combining and layering diverse, experimental and opposing elements his music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world by a vast array of performers and organisations, including Irish National Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, Welsh National Opera, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Red Note Ensemble, Ulster Orchestra, Fidelio Trio to name but a few.

He has collaborated and made work with artists from vastly different disciplines including Seamus Heaney, Keiji Haino, Willie Doherty, Primal Scream, David Holmes, Joanna Macgregor, Paul Dunmall, Eduard Bersudsky, U2 and Jennifer Walshe as well as thousands of groups and individuals from all dimensions of society including ex-paramilitaries, young offenders, victims of violence, special needs groups, residential homes, community choirs, gardeners, footballers, bankers, homeless associations, call centre workers and schools.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Agency

Saturday 5th April 2025 - 2pm

The Studio, National Concert Hall

Claude Vivier Bouchara (1981) Donnacha Dennehy Agency (2025) (world premiere)

Lotte Betts-Dean mezzo-soprano

Ficino Ensemble

Siobhán Doyle violin

Danny McCann-Williams violin

Anthony Mulholland viola

Yseult Cooper Stockdale cello

Dan Bodwell double bass

Sinéad Farrell flute

Matthew Manning oboe

Macdara Ó Seireadáin clarinet

Sinéad Frost bassoon

Hannah Miller horn

Alex Petcu percussion

Billy O’Brien piano

Nathan Sherman conductor

Programme Notes

Composed by one of the 20th century’s most remarkable figures, Claude Vivier’s colourful and vibrant work Bouchara is performed alongside a new commission by Donnacha Dennehy: Agency, a set of songs that looks at the idea of agency in life, the natural world, and time itself. Claude Vivier, one of the most original and important figures of his generation, was murdered at the age of 34, but left behind a legacy of the most unique and exquisite music. Bouchara, a love song, is one of Vivier’s finest works. Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, inspired by Vivier’s music, has created a magical set of songs for this special event.

Bouchara (subtitled ‘chanson d’amour’) is a 1981 work for mixed chamber ensemble by Canadian composer Claude Vivier. It was originally intended to serve as an interlude for his unfinished opera Rêves d’un Marco Polo but was published independently of the opera. The piece was premiered on 14 February 1983 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Vivier wrote on the finished manuscript:

Bouchara se veut une longue chanson d’amour... le texte entier est une langue inventée, une langue d’amour, histoire se répétant éternellement.

Bouchara is meant to be a long love song... the entire text is sung in an invented language, a language of love, a story which repeats itself continually.

Biographies

Claude Vivier

Many consider Claude Vivier the greatest composer Canada has yet produced. At the age of 34, he was the victim of a shocking murder, leaving behind some 49 compositions in a wide range of genres, including opera, orchestral works, and chamber pieces. György Ligeti once called Vivier ‘the finest French composer of his generation.’

Born in Montréal, Vivier studied at the Conservatoire de Musique. In the fall of 1976 a visit to Bali caused Vivier to reevaluate his ideas concerning the role of the artist in society, initiating a new period in his stylistic evolution. In the wake of this journey he wrote Shiraz (1977) for piano, Orion (1979) for orchestra, and his opera Kopernikus (1978–79). Above all, it was in his cycle of pieces for voice and instrumental ensemble, particularly Lonely Child (1980) and Prologue pour un Marco Polo (1981) that Vivier’s unique style crystallised. In a New York Times profile, Paul Griffiths observed, ‘The harmonic auras are suddenly more complex, and the fantastic orchestration is unlike anything in Vivier’s earlier music, or anyone else’s…’

Vivier advocates include Mauricio Kagel, Kent Nagano, Reinbert de Leeuw, David Robertson and Dawn Upshaw. Vivier’s music featured prominently in Holland Festival 2005, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra opened its 2005–06 season with Lonely Child, with David Robertson conducting and Dawn Upshaw as the soprano soloist. In 2005, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra inaugurated the Claude Vivier National Prize for the best work by a Canadian composer.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Lotte Betts-Dean

Praised for her ‘irrepressible sense of drama and unmissable, urgent musicality’ (The Guardian), Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean is passionate about curation and programming, with a broad repertoire that encompasses contemporary, chamber and early music, as well as art song, opera, oratorio and non-classical collaborations. As a specialist in contemporary repertoire, Lotte has premiered many works by contemporary composers, and recorded several composer portrait albums, including Michael Finnissy, Stuart MacRae, Catherine Lamb and Arthur Keegan.

Recent highlights include her debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Weinberg’s Die Passagierin singing Vlasta, and at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Shlomowitz’ Electric Dreams. This summer brought a return to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra following her debut in 2019 with Sir Andrew Davis, as well as a return to the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, West Cork Chamber Music Festival and Kings Place London. Earlier in the season, she returned to Wigmore Hall for a recital with the Armida Quartet.

The 2024/25 season sees Lotte return to Bayerische Staatsoper, as well as debuts with Ensemble MusikFabrik in Cologne, Phaedra Ensemble for Music in the Round, at Festival November Music in s’-Hertogenbosch and New Music Dublin. Lotte will also record and release a further seven albums across Delphian Records, Odradek Records and Platoon. Lotte is an alumnus of the Young Artist programmes at Britten Pears Arts, City Music Foundation and Oxford Lieder, having won the 2019 Oxford Lieder Platform with frequent collaborator Joseph Havlat. She has returned to the Festival every year since, curating a series of programmes of everything from Renaissance lute song and German lied to 20th-century art song, cabaret and experimental art rock, including her acclaimed solo voice and electronics show Voice Electric, which debuted at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2022. Lotte won the Young Artist Award at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, who praised her as ‘a visionary performer, initiating one bold collaboration after another.’ She is an Ambassador for Donne, a charitable foundation dedicated to promoting gender equality in the music industry, and in 2022 she was named as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music for her contributions to music.

Donnacha Dennehy

Donnacha Dennehy’s music is marked by a sonic and rhythmic intensity and a kind of volatile tonality that travels in and out of an overtone-based focus. His music has featured in festivals and venues including the Edinburgh International Festival, Carnegie Hall, New York, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, Barbican, London and BAM, New York.

In addition to two previous operas with Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist (Landmark Productions and Irish National Opera), recent large-scale commissions include The Hunger, a docu-cantata for Alarm Will Sound (presented by BAM, New York and Opera Theatre of St. Louis), Broken Unison for Sō Percussion (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Cork Opera House); Overcasting (commissioned by the LA Phil); Tessellatum for Nadia Sirota, Liam Byrne and microtonal viol consort; and pieces for Dawn Upshaw, National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, Third Coast Percussion, Kronos Quartet, and the Doric Quartet.

He continues to maintain a close artistic connection with the group he founded, Crash Ensemble, and they feature in The First Child and in his opera, The Second Violinist, which won the 2017 FEDORA-Generali Prize for Opera. Portrait albums have been released by Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, Cantaloupe, NMC and Bedroom Community. His violin concerto for Augustin Hadelich was premiered in the Netherlands in October 2021. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a professor at Princeton University. His music is published by G. Schirmer, New York.

Ficino Ensemble

Formed in 2013, Ficino Ensemble is an acclaimed chamber music group known for programming a breadth of musical styles. Their concerts have been described as ‘distinctive, transparent and carefully poised’, and have been broadcast on radio programmes worldwide. Each member of the ensemble is a major force on the Irish classical and contemporary music scene, and enjoy devoting time to curated chamber music programmes.

The group regularly collaborates with composers and are devoted to the presentation of new music as the feature of diligently programmed concerts. In 2018, the group performed a concert of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 132 in darkness, which included a reading of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets read by Olwen Fouéré. Their live performances are regularly featured on RTÉ and BBC. Ficino Ensemble released its debut recording Winter in 2018 and was long-listed for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize. It was described as ‘perfect in every way’ (Bernard Clarke RTÉ Lyric Fm). Its album, a collaboration with Michelle O’Rourke recording Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs, was released in 2022 was described as ‘bewitching’ (The Guardian), and was included in The Guardian’s Top 10 Folk Albums of 2022 and awarded Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp.

Ficino Ensemble takes its name after the Renaissance polymath Marsilio Ficino who emphasised the importance of music for the enrichment of the soul.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Refracting Light

Saturday 5th April 2025 - 4.30pm

Pepper Canister Church, Dublin

Iannis Xenakis Nuits (1967)

Georgi Sztojanov Refracting Light

Arvo Pärt The Woman with the Alabaster Box (1997)

Kaija Saariaho Nuits, adieux (1991)

Anna-Karin Klockar Speeches (2016)

Chamber Choir Ireland

Benjamin Goodson conductor

Programme Notes

Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir Benjamin Goodson joins Chamber Choir Ireland for this programme of contemporary choral music.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) Nuits

Dedicated to nameless political prisoners.

Nuits was composed as a protest against the cruel incarceration of untried political prisoners, and revisits the dark nights of the composer’s youth spent in a prison cell in Athens. It strips vocal music of any known form of language or recognisable words, and replaces them with phonemes from Sumerian and ancient Persian tongues, oscillating between speaking and singing, talking and chanting, screaming and grunting.

Georgi Sztojanov (b. 1985) Refracting Light

Georgi Sztojanov’s Refracting Light is based on the visual metaphor that just as light breaks into infinite colours and angles in a crystal clear prism, truth breaks in the prism of words, but all colours can be united into pure, undivided light.

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) The Woman with the Alabaster Box (1997)

Arvo Pärt’s The Woman with the Alabaster Box tells a story from the Gospel of Matthew. Female voices dominate the story of the woman who poured precious ointment on Jesus’s head. The displeasure of the disciples is conveyed through a duet of male voices; Jesus’s direct speech is communicated through the bass voices, and his prediction by the full sound of the choir.

Kaija Saariaho (1952–2023) Nuits, adieux (1991)

Kaija Saariaho’s Nuits, adieux is about singing, breathing, whispering, night time, farewells. The piece uses texts from Jacques Roubaud’s Echanges de la lumière and excerpts from Honoré de Balzac’s Séraphita, alternating throughout in a sequence of ‘Nuits’ and ‘Adieus’.

Anna-Karin

Klockar (b. 1960) Speeches (2016)

Anna-Karin Klockar’s Speeches is an avant-garde choral cycle consisting of three different historical speeches: one by a French suffragist, one by a Native American Chief, and the “dog is a man’s best friend” speech. Olympe de Gouges (1748–93) wrote the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman” in Paris 1791. Her devotion to the cause of women’s rights led to her execution by the guillotine in November 1793. After a devastating battle, Hinmuuttu-yalatlat (Chief Joseph) (1840–1904), leader of the native Indians – Nez Perce, surrendered to General Nelson in Montana Territory on October 5, 1877 with a powerful speech. During a trial in Warrensburg, Missouri on September 23, 1870, George Graham Vest (1830–1904) was representing a man who sued another for killing his dog. His speech ”A man’s best friend” as closing arguments won the case.

Biographies

Benjamin Goodson

Benjamin Goodson is Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir. Benjamin Goodson is a leading conductor of choral and instrumental music. He works with many of the world’s most virtuosic choral ensembles, performing 20th and 21st-century a cappella music and Baroque and Classical oratorio. Benjamin’s concerts are recognised for being vibrant, bold and heartfelt. They have taken him to major venues across Europe, the USA, China, Japan, and Australia.

Since 2020 Benjamin has served as the Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir. Their debut album featuring motets by Mendelssohn and Rheinberger was released in 2023 on Pentatone to critical acclaim. Described as ‘unmissable’ by Stretto and ‘an extraordinary choral disc’ by Scherzo, the recording received 5 stars from BBC Music Magazine and was nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

Benjamin regularly works as a guest conductor with other prominent choral ensembles, including

the BBC Singers, Rundfunkchor Berlin, SWR Vokalensemble, Collegium Vocale Gent, Chamber Choir Ireland, Chorwerk Ruhr and others.

Chamber Choir Ireland

As the country’s national chamber choir, Chamber Choir Ireland holds a unique place in the cultural life of Ireland. Through broadcasts, streaming, and live performances, they bring the joy of worldclass choral music to over a million listeners each year. Chamber Choir Ireland has built a stellar reputation as Ireland’s premier professional choral ensemble, with awe-inspiring performances at home and abroad. CCI’s programming is as diverse as it is daring, championing leading Irish and international composers through commissions and premieres.

CCI’s recordings are consistently met with critical acclaim. Based at Ireland’s National Concert Hall, the choir tours extensively throughout Ireland and internationally. Beyond the concert stage, CCI is deeply committed to working closely with communities across Ireland through its Learning and Participation activities. Chamber Choir Ireland receives principal funding from the Arts Council/ an Chomhairle Ealaíon, and support from Dublin City Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland through its National Lottery Fund. CCI is a resident ensemble at the National Concert Hall of Ireland, Associate Artists to Dublin City University, and a member of TENSO, the network of professional chamber choirs in Europe.

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland/Dublin City Council

Sopranos

Abbi Temple

Felicity Hayward

Charlotte O’Hare

Clover Willis

Altos

Christina Whyte

Mark Chambers

Sarah Thursfield

Eilís Dexter

Tenors

Rory Lynch

Christopher Bowen

Daniel Lewis

Martti Anttila

Basses

Jeffrey Ledwidge

Eoghan Desmond

William Gaunt

Ben Rowarth

CEO

Majella Hollywood

Operations Manager

David Darcy

Marketing and Development Manager

Aoife Cuthbert

Production Co-ordinator

Conleth Stanley

Education and Administration Officer

Hannah Millington

Graphic Design

Gareth Jones

Principal Funder

The Arts Council /an Chomhairle Ealaíon

Additional Support

National Concert Hall

Dublin City Council

Dublin City University

RTÉ Supporting the Arts

Tenso Network Europe

Patron

Michael D Higgins

President of Ireland

Board of Directors

Mark Armstrong

Scott Hayes

Pawel Krzysiek

Susan Lannigan (Chair)

Clodagh Logue

Ian Smith

Louise Whyte

Thurston Moore: Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations

Saturday 5th April 2025 - 7pm

Main Stage, National Concert Hall

Thurston Moore

A Suite For Cloud Formations

Cirrus

Stratus

Nimbus

Cumulus

Lenticular

Mammatus

Fallstreak Holes

Virga

Asperitas

Thurston Moore guitar

Alex Ward clarinet, guitar

Jennifer Chochinov guitar

Jeremy Doulton percussion

Programme Notes

American composer Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca Ensemble) presents Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations. This suite, heard here in its world-premiere performance, encompasses nine works in which Thurston Moore employs 12-string electric and six-string electric guitars, playing alongside guitarists Alex Ward and Jennifer Chochinov with percussion by Jeremy Doulton.

Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations is inspired by Moore’s fascination with sky-scapes across the island of Ireland and off the coast of England and Wales. Moore acknowledges “that island life offers a constant shared consciousness, whether from a foggy morning with low visibility or in darkening moments preparing our villages for a menacing storm—we live and breathe in the shared ‘castles and clubhouses of the air’”.

These many cloud formations sparked Moore’s imagination as he interpreted nine unique shapes that defy architecture into layers of exquisite riffing and rippling daydreams. The programme begins with cirrus clouds, stratus, nimbus and cumulus clouds, followed by hybrid types of clouds and less common and more mysterious formations including lenticular, mammatus, fallstreak holes, virga and asperitas.

Fans of Thurston Moore’s triple CD box set Spirit Counsel will find in these new meditations hopeful works that offer a shared, timeless and universal experience in a period when much of the world is distracted.

Biographies

Thurston Moore

Thurston Moore started Sonic Youth in 1980. Since then, he has been at the forefront of the alternative rock scene since that particular sobriquet was first used to signify any music that challenged and defied the mainstream standard. With Sonic Youth, Moore turned on an entire generation to the value of experimentation in rock n roll – from its inspiration on a nascent Nirvana, to Sonic Youth’s own Daydream Nation album being chosen by the US Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006.

Thurston records and performs in a cavalcade of disciplines, ranging from free improvisation to acoustic composition to black/white metal/noise disruption. He has worked with Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Bobby Gillespie, David Toop, Cecil Taylor, Faust, Glenn Branca and many others. His residency at the Louvre in Paris included collaborations with Irmin Schmidt of CAN and Stephen O’Malley. Alongside his various activities in the musical world, he is involved with publishing and poetry, and teaches writing at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Boulder CO, a programme founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in 1974. Thurston also teaches music at The Rhythmic Music Conservatory (Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium) in Copenhagen. Presently he performs and records solo, with various ensembles and in his own band, The Thurston Moore Group. In 2014, the band released The Best Day (Matador) which critics described as ‘optimistic and sun-drenched in beauty’ that has ‘experimental attitude dovetailed with instantly accessible pop melodies.’

In 2017, Thurston Moore Group released a full-length album, Rock n Roll Consciousness, which was recorded in The Church Studios in London with producer Paul Epworth. The songs are expansive,

anthemic and exploratory with lyrics that investigate and herald the love between angels, goddess mysticism and a belief in healing through new birth.

Thurston Moore’s Spirit Counsel release is a box set of material recorded between 2018-19. His seventh solo full-length album By the Fire has been described as ‘mesmerising’ (Rolling Stone) and ‘righteous’ (The Independent).

Alex Ward

Alex is a London-based clarinettist, guitarist and composer touring with the Thurston Moore Group since 2023.

Jennifer Chochinov

Jennifer is a London-based guitarist and composer who recently released her debut full length album Once Around with her band Schande.

Jeremy Doulton

Jeremy is a London-based percussionist touring with the Thurston Moore Group for several years and appearing as principal percussionist on Thurston Moore’s full length albums Rock n Roll Consciousness (Universal/Fiction, 2017), By the Fire (DLS 2020) and Flow Critical Lucidity (DLS 2024).

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

The Blue Shroud

Saturday 5th April 2025 - 9pm

The Studio, National Concert Hall, Dublin

The Blue Shroud by Barry Guy (Irish premiere)

Barry Guy bass and director

Savina Yannatou voice

Jordina Millà piano

Maya Homburger violin

Fanny Paccoud viola

Benjamin Dwyer guitar

Torben Snekkestad soprano sax / tenor / reed trumpet

Michael Niesemann alto sax / oboe

Per Texas Johansson tenor sax / clarinet

Julius Gabriel baritone sax / soprano

Percy Pursglove trumpet

Marc Unternährer tuba

Lucas Niggli percussion

Ramón López percussion

Programme Notes

Barry Guy performs and directs his remarkable new work, The Blue Shroud, a piece that brings together superb musicians in a creative scenario that reflects his belief that compassion is still a currency open to all, with the ultimate hope that humanity will learn from history.

Three strands inform The Blue Shroud: the bombing in 1937 of the Basque city of Guernica; the painting by Pablo Picasso that arose following the event; and in more recent times (2003) a blue drape that was hung over a tapestry reproduction of the Guernica painting in the United Nations building before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his case for invading Iraq.

It was historian Simon Schama’s analysis of Picasso’s painting that drew Guy into the world of Guernica and the resonances that have accompanied its history. The result is a piece of music that reflects the realities of the subject matter, while indicating the power of the human spirit to withstand oppression.

Barry Guy has assembled an international team of musicians adept at co-existing in the worlds of improvisation as well as Baroque music, and fragments of Biber and J.S. Bach included in the score sit side by side with contemporary modes of expression, the rhetoric of each bridging the gap between the centuries.

The project is further enriched by the words of Irish poet Kerry Hardie, who created Symbols of Guernica as the text for Guy’s composition, as well as two further verses for the end of the work. Hardie’s contribution became the backbone of the piece, which reflects on the human condition and the continued suffering and violence in the world, seen through the lens of Picasso’s iconic painting.

Biographies

Barry

Guy

Barry Guy is an innovative bass player and composer whose creative diversity in the fields of jazz improvisation, chamber and orchestral performance and solo recitals is the outcome both of an unusually varied training and a zest for experimentation, underpinned by a dedication to the double bass and the ideal of musical communication. He is founder and Artistic Director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) for which he has written several extended works. In 2014 he founded the Blue Shroud Band to perform his composition The Blue Shroud.

His concert works for chamber orchestras, chamber groups and soloists have been widely performed. He continues to give solo recitals throughout Europe as well as continuing associations with colleagues involved in improvised, Baroque and contemporary music. In 2016 Barry Guy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Middlesex, London and also appointed Visiting Professor to the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen. His solo works for violin, played by Maya Homburger, can be heard, framed by the Sonatas and Partitas by J.S. Bach, on three solo violin CDs released on the Maya Recordings Label.

Savina Yannatou

Savina Yannatou was born in Athens, Greece. She studied voice with Gogo Georgilopoulou and Spiros Sakkas in Athens, and later at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In 1979,

while still a student, she began working as a professional singer collaborating with the composer Lena Platonos in a now-legendary programme on the Greek Radio 3.

She has collaborated with many Greek composers, interpreting songs and Greek contemporary operas, and has released numerous albums since then. She also was a founding member of an early music ensemble in Athens.

Parallel to this she started a collaboration with six Thessaloniki-based musicians, with whom she has recorded nine CDs and performed at venues including the Barbican and the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Melbourne Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y and Symphony Space in New York, the London Jazz Festival, WOMAD festivals, and many more. Savina Yannatou has also composed her own music and songs, as well as music for theatre.

She also works as a free-jazz vocalist since 1992, having collaborated with Peter Kowald and Nikos Touliatos and later with Barry Guy (Maya Recordings released the CD Attikos, a live recording of their concert at Bimhuis in Amsterdam, in 2010).

Jordina Millà

Austrian based pianist, composer and improviser Jordina Millà explores free improvised music and contemporary language. Introduced to the improvisational world by Agustí Fernández, her music is in constant development. She has released acclaimed albums, and is a member of Barry Guy’s Blue Shroud Band and other groups. She is the founder of PRISMA, an initiative that aims to make the discipline of improvisation visible in the city of Salzburg.

Maya Homburger

Born and educated in Zurich, Switzerland, Maya Homburger moved to England in 1986 to join the English Baroque Soloists, The English Concert and other period instrument groups. Concerts and recordings as leader of the Chandos Baroque Players and founding her own Trio Virtuoso led her to specialise in chamber music and solo performance. In 1993 she recorded the 12 fantasies for solo violin by Telemann and in 1995 the six sonatas for violin and harpsichord by J.S. Bach together with Malcolm Proud.

Ever since meeting the composer and solo bassist Barry Guy during an extended concert tour with Christopher Hogwood’s Academy of Ancient Music in 1988, she has devoted her time developing her own personal style on the Baroque violin as well as managing the Barry Guy New Orchestra, the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and running her own CD label Maya Recordings. The idea to perform Baroque solo works in the context of free improvised music and newly commissioned pieces sparked the Homburger/Guy Duo and together Maya Homburger and Barry Guy have given concerts in many major jazz, new music and Baroque music festivals all over Europe.

Fanny Paccoud

After receiving her Diploma from the Strasbourg conservatory, Fanny Paccoud concentrated initially on chamber music and new music. Since 1999 she has formed a duo with the pianist Michel Gaechter, exploring a rich repertoire from Mozart to Schoenberg. She has taken part in many premieres and recordings, and can sometimes be found alongside jazz musicians and improvisers. Fanny Paccoud also pursues research into early music interpretation on original instruments. Playing violin and viola, she is a member of the Concert Spirituel, the English Baroque Soloists and

the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the Concert Brisé, Les Ambassadeurs, Pygmalion, the Amarillis ensemble, among others. In 2002 she founded, with the violinist Alice Piérot and the cellist Elena Andreyev, the Anpapié string trio, which is devoted to the Classical repertoire.

Benjamin Dwyer

Benjamin Dwyer’s music is forged from an intensive amalgamation of technical and interpretative elements. As an educator, Dwyer’s extensive work in these fields gives him the combined skills to create teaching environments that are fluid and responsive to the broad needs of students and researchers today. As a classical guitarist, with an particular interest in 20th-century and contemporary music, Dwyer performs worldwide and has appeared as soloist with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic (Germany), the Santos Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), the VOX21 new-music ensemble, the Callino Quartet (UK) and the Vogler String Quartet (Germany). As a free improviser, Dwyer is a member of Barry Guy’s Blue Shroud Band. With the Band, he has featured as a performer in the Krakow Autumn Jazz Festivals of 2014 and 2016, Frankfurt Opera (2018), and the EFG London Jazz Festival 2019 as a soloist and in the Band’s ‘small formations’. Dwyer is an elected member of Aosdána (the Irish Government-sponsored academy of creative artists), an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, and a recipient of the Villa-Lobos Centenary Medal (Brazilian Government).

Torben Snekkestad

Torben Snekkestad has explored vast areas of music, from free improvisation and jazz playing as a leader and sideman, to classical chamber music playing and as a soloist with symphony orchestras. With a distinct poetic ear, extremely extended playing techniques, intuitive improvisations, evocative compositional use of structure and textures, Snekkestad earns himself a place as one of the most inspiring Scandinavian saxophonists around.

He has performed and worked with, among others: Barry Guy, Nate Wooley, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Koichi Makigami, Thomas Strønen, Arve Henriksen, Søren Kjærgaard, Raymond Strid, Peter Evans, Augusti Fernandez, Paal Nilssen-Love, Andrew Cyrille, Jon Balke and Cikada String Quartet. He has toured extensively throughout Europe, USA, Russia, East Asia and Argentina.

Michael Niesemann

Michael Niesemann is musically active in a wide field – from Baroque music on period instruments (oboe/recorder) to jazz and avant-garde on both saxophone and oboe. He is alto saxophonist in two ensembles founded by Barry Guy – the legendary London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO) and the Blue Shroud Band.

As a conductor he has worked mainly under the umbrella of historical performance practice as well as with modern orchestras within colleges. Since 1992 he enjoys his position as principal oboist of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the English Baroque Soloists. He has been principal oboist for Musica Antiqua Köln, conducted by Reinhard Göbel and was a founding member of Concerto Köln as well as Il Concertino Köln. Since 2007 Michael Niesemann has been professor of oboes at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen and was formally professor of Baroque oboe at Musikhochschule Würzburg.

Per Texas Johanssen

Per Texas Johanssen is Based in Stockholm. He works as a composer and musician having been educated in sax and clarinet at the music conservatory in Stockholm. He also plays the flute and bassoon. He has released several albums in his own name and been awarded a Swedish Grammy, while three of his albums have been voted as best jazz album of the year in Sweden. He is currently working with a clarinet chamber music programme and writing music for his new album.

Julius Gabriel

Julius Gabriel is a saxophonist whose work focuses on the exploration of his instruments in all their limits and dimensions. As a solo artist, his creative and genre-bending approach is manifested in several solo albums. As a collaborator he has founded a number of vibrant groups. He is a member of the Barry Guy Blue Shroud Band, and has played with the London Jazz Composers Orchestra under Guy’s direction.

Born and raised in East Berlin, he began his musical education at public music schools, broadened by the underground club culture and free jazz pioneer Gunter Hampel as a mentor. At the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, he completed a BA in Jazz Performing Artist, supplemented by courses at the Institute for Computer Music and Electronic Media and ensemble projects for new music. He received a scholarship abroad to Porto, Portugal and was artist in residence at the Indian Music Experience Museum in Bangalore, India.

Percy Pursglove

Percy Pursglove is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser and educator from the UK. Alumnus of both the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and New School University, New York City, Percy is now nearing the end of his PhD studies hinged around choral composition. Percy is currently the newest member of the NDR Big Band, Hamburg, a position against which he balances numerous freelance projects and compositional commissions. As a renowned educator, Percy has been most closely associated with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s senior and junior departments and acted as visiting tutor and external examiner for: the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity Laban, Guildhall School of Music, University of Birmingham, Chethams Schools of Music and Leeds College of Music.

Some of the most prominent artists Percy has performed and recorded with include NDR Big Band Hamburg, WDR Big Band Köln, Bill Frissell, Barry Guy, Michael Gibbs, Phil Woods, Claudio Roditi, Evan Parker, Jakob Bro, Elliott Sharpe, Vince Mendoza, Peter Erskine, Django Bates, Steve Swallow, Chris Potter, David Liebman, Dave Holland, Enrico Pieranunzi, Norma Winstone, Elbow, Jamie Cullum, Laura Mvula, Gregory Porter, Dr John and Amy Winehouse.

Marc Unternährer

Marc Unternährer is a tuba player based in Switzerland. Grants brought him to Chicago and Berlin, where he established various long lasting artistic partnerships. Classically trained, he is stylistically very open and plays in various projects ranging from freely improvised music and jazz to pop and modern composition. Some collaborations that have been very important for him are with theatre director Ruedi Häusermann, bassist and composer Barry Guy, singer Erika Stucky, saxophonist Silke Eberhard, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, artist Miriam Sturzenegger and many more.

He has recorded dozens of records, amongst others with the Chicago Luzern Exchange, featuring Josh Berman, Keefe Jackson and Frank Rosaly, and with the adventurous band Le Rex. He is currently teaching at the Hochschule Luzern and the Hochschule der Künste Bern. www.munter.li

Lucas Niggli

Lucas Niggli was born in 1968 and lives in Zurich, Switzerland. As one of the most in-demand European drummers and improvisers, Lucas Niggli plays in various bands including Steamboat Switzerland (with Dominik Blum and Marino Pliakas, Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the Blue Shroud Band.

He has toured all over the world and has performed the works of contemporary composers (Olga Neuwirth, Sam Hayden, D. Dramm, M. Werthmüller), and taken part in several crossover projects with such musicians as Andreas Schaerer, Aly Keïta, Butch Morris, Sylvie Courvoisier, Charlotte Hug, Fred Frith. He has played on more than 60 CDs, most of them on INTAKT Records, teaches at the University of Arts in Zurich (ZHdK) and is promoter of a concert series for contemporary music. www.lucasniggli.com

Ramón López

Ramón López was born in Alicante in 1961. He began as a self-taught drummer in the mid-1970s. He was part of local groups until he decided to move to Paris in January 1985 and became increasingly involved in the experimental scene in France. He developed an interest in Indian music and after many years of studying Tabla in France and India, he taught Indian Music with Patrick Moutal at the Paris Conservatory CNSMDP.

Among many others, Lopez has worked with Rashied Ali, Jim Baker, Conny Bauer, Majid Bekkas, Samuel Blaser, Anthony Coleman, Andrew Cyrille, Hamid Drake, Peter Evans, Agustí Fernández, Glenn Ferris, Joe Fonda, Sonny Fortune, Georges Garzone, Barry Guy, Charles Gayle, Teppo HautaAho, Daniel Humair, Howard Johnson, Aly Keita, Joachim Kühn, Joelle Leandre, Jeanne Lee, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Joe Morris, Ivo Perelman, Michel Portal, Enrico Rava, Dave Rempis, Paul Rogers, Louis Sclavis, Alain Silva, Archie Shepp, John Surman, Mal Waldron, Nils Wogram and other remarkable contemporary jazz musicians, performing in concerts and festivals around the world. The French government named him Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2008.

Thanks to Pro Helvetia for their support

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland/Pro Helvetia

Legato

Sunday 6th April 2025 - 11am

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

Extracts of new pieces by:

Vincent Portes

Anne Castex

Monika Dalach Sayers

Laura Heneghan

John Aulich

Paul Scully (all world premieres)

Cédric Jullion flute

Bogdan Sydorenko clarinet

Amandine Lecras cello

Chae Um Kim piano

Alexandra Greffin-Klein violin Jean Deroyer conductor

Programme Notes

This programme brings together world-premiere performances of excerpts of new works by promising young composers, who share the fruits of an exceptional international mentoring opportunity.

LEGATO is an international composer development programme devised by organisations across three countries: CMC Ireland, New Music Dublin, Sound Festival Scotland & Festival Ensemble(s). This project brings together partners from France, Ireland and Scotland to give six emerging composers (two from each country) the opportunity to discover the new musical works from each other’s countries, to write new work under the guidance of two composer mentors, Jérôme Combier and Laura Bowler and to have their works performed at festivals in Bagnolet, Aberdeen and now Dublin.

The composers were selected through an open call process, and they are: Laura Heneghan, Paul Scully, John Aulich, Monika Dalach Sayers, Anne Castex and Vincent Portes. Following the initial workshops in Paris in September, Irish composer Laura Heneghan shared her experience of the programme:

‘The first phase of the LEGATO programme began in September 2024 when I travelled to Paris, and it was an incredibly enriching experience. The weekend consisted of meeting my fellow composers and our mentors, Jérôme Combier and Laura Bowler. There was a welcoming sense of community as we spent Friday and Saturday getting to know each other, sharing our work, and discussing our aspirations for the programme and our final compositions.

The standout moment of the weekend was undoubtedly the one-on-one tutorials with our mentors. Each session offered a chance to dive deeper into our compositions. My tutorial with Laura Bowler was particularly impactful. We discussed my vision and the inspiration behind my piece, exploring the best ways to shape these ideas into a finished work. She challenged me to explore new concepts that pushed me beyond my usual creative boundaries. Her suggestions for incorporating extended techniques on instruments were eye-opening, and she provided valuable resources for further exploration. I felt inspired and ready to experiment with my work in ways I hadn’t considered before.’

Biographies

Cedric Jullion

Cedric Jullion was born in the Parisian suburbs and entered the National Conservatory of Lyon followed by the degree course at the National Conservatory of Paris. After being hired by ensembles of contemporary music such as the Ensemble InterContemporain and the ensemble Court-circuit, he joined the Ensemble L’Instant Donné and the Ensemble Cairn. For ten years, the activity of these ensembles has brought him to many important international festivals. As a teacher, he’s leading artistic education in two departmental conservatories in the suburbs of Paris.

Bogdan Sydorenko

Bogdan Sydorenko was born in 1989 in Ukraine into a family of musicians and studied at the Kyiv Specialised School of Music and National Music Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv. Currently, he works regularly as a guest musician with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Multilatérale, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Orchestre Prométhée, the Orchestre Pasdeloup, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, as well as on solo programme projects with orchestras in France, Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, Ukraine, and prepares for numerous international competitions.

Alexandra Greffin-Klein

Alexandra Greffin-Klein studied violin at the Royal College of Music in London. Important influences were Walter Levin (LaSalle Quartet), Günter Pichler (Alban Berg Quartet), the Arditti Quartet, and the composer György Kurtag. She has played with various quartets (Diotima, Phidias, Parisii). She is also active in many chamber music ensembles (Cairn, Alternance, Multilatérale, Itinéraire, Sillage) and has been a regular member of the Ensemble Court-Circuit since 2012. She has worked closely with many composers and has been awarded a number of prizes for her recordings. Greffin-Klein lectures and gives masterclasses at many schools, such as the École Normale in

Paris, New York University, Boston University, the New England Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music, the Munich Musikhochschule, the Beijing Central Conservatory, and the Birmingham Royal Conservatory. www.alexgreffinklein.com

Amandine Lecras

Trained at the Hautes Écoles de Musique in Geneva and Lausanne, and at the Académie Tibor Varga, Amandine Lecras pursues her musical path with great enthusiasm and passion. With boundless energy, Amandine practises music in all its forms, from solo to chamber music, orchestral training and teaching.

She has performed in over 20 countries at major festivals, and has shared the stage with leading figures of our time such as Mischa Maïsky, Joshua Bell, Maxim Vengerov, Renauld Capuçon, among others.

Amandine Lecras is particularly interested in contemporary composers. She is the cellist and founding member of the renowned Lemanic Modern Ensemble.

Chae-Um Kim

Pianist Chae-Um Kim, originally from South Korea and now based in Paris, has been invited to numerous contemporary music festivals such as the Boulez Biennale at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Messiaen Festival (La Meije), Traiettorie (Parma), and the New Music Forum (Ljubljana), among others. She has collaborated with composers such as Philippe Manoury, George Benjamin, Tristan Murail, Nina Sěnk, Agata Zubel to name a few.

In 2020, she won the Third Prize at the 14th International Piano Competition in Orléans, France. Chae-Um Kim furthered her musical studies in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, and in Italy at the International Academy of Imola. In France, she studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. Currently, she is preparing her doctoral dissertation at the Paris Conservatoire and Sorbonne University.

Jean Deroyer

The French conductor Jean Deroyer was born in 1979. At the age of 15 he enrolled at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris where he was awarded five first prizes. Jean Deroyer has been invited to conduct numerous orchestras and has built a close and privileged relationship with Ensemble Intercontemporain.

Alongside Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös he conducted Stockhausen’s Gruppen for three orchestras at the 2007 Lucerne Festival. In 2010, he gave the premiere of Les Boulingrin, opera composed by Georges Aperghis, staged by Jérôme Deschamps at the Opera Comique in Paris, with the Klangforum Wien. Notable recent and forthcoming engagements include concerts with BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Opera National de Paris, Ensemble Modern, Auckland Philharmonia and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra Dublin.

LEGATO works in partnership with Diaphonique, the Vaughan Williams Foundation, Contemporary Music Centre – Ireland, soundfestival, SACEM, copie privé, and the French ensembles Court-circuit, Sillages, 2e2m, Cairn, Multilatérale

A Child of the Universe

Sunday 6th April 2025 - 12.30pm

Main Stage, National Concert Hall

Seán Doherty All the Things Magicians Do (text by C.S. Lewis)

Sue Furlong Peace Songs from County Wexford

Marian Ingoldsby Mol an Óige (texts: Irish proverb, Emily Dickinson, world premiere commissioned by New Music Dublin)

Sue Furlong Mo Ghile Mear

Ciarán Kelly/Carl Corcoran A Child of the Universe (text by Max Ehrmann, world premiere commissioned by New Music Dublin)

Cór Linn

Ciarán Kelly music director

Naoise Whearity music assistant

Carole O’Connor accompanist

Sarah Luttrell vocal coach

Cór na nÓg

Mary Amond O’Brien music director

Jennifer McMahon music assistant

Carole O’Connor accompanist

NSO Choral Team

Aaron Walsh, Sarah Power, Sasha Ward choral stewards

Mary Kilduff NSO choirs assistant

Lesley Bishop NSO choral manager

Joe Csibi head of NSO and Choirs

Guest Musicians

Andreja Malir harp

Leinster String Quartet

Programme Notes

The NCH Youth Choirs return for their seventh consecutive New Music Dublin performance, including two world premieres commissioned for the Festival.

This year’s programme has young people as its focus, encouraging them and their audience to be true to themselves in an ever-changing world. Two works by the late Sue Furlong, a composer who writes brilliantly for children’s voices, are beautifully set, with Seán Doherty and Marian Ingoldsby’s pieces light in style, yet thoughtful. Both choirs combine for Carl Corcoran and Ciarán Kelly’s A Child of the Universe, a setting of the moving Desiderata text by Max Ehrmann – now almost 100 years old but as relevant today as ever.

Biographies

Cór Linn

Cór Linn is a mixed soprano, alto, tenor, bass (SATB) choir of 55 singers aged between 14 and 19. It was founded in 2018 to give young singers the opportunity to develop their vocal skills in more advanced repertoire, and to act as a stepping stone to adult choirs. Following their transfer from RTÉ to the National Concert Hall in January 2022, they have settled into rehearsals and performances alongside their NCH choral family members - the National Symphony Chorus and Cór na nÓg. First conducted by Mary Amond O’Brien (2018-2023) and subsequently Ciarán Kelly (2023-present), they have gone from strength to strength, winning the Youth Choir prize at the City of Derry International Choir Festival in October 2024.

Cór na nÓg

Cór na nÓg is one of Ireland’s leading children’s choirs, providing vocal training and performance experience for 60 children aged between nine and 13, in a fun, social and supportive environment. The choir was formed in 1987 by RTÉ’s choral director, Colin Mawby, also founder of the National Symphony Chorus (formerly RTÉ Philharmonic Choir). He was succeeded by Blánaid Murphy and Maire Mannion, before current Choral Director Mary Amond O’Brien assumed the position in 2011. Cór na nÓg has performed at hundreds of State, festival and charity events in prestigious venues including St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Castle, Áras an Úachtaráin and the Pro Cathedral, as well as appearing on RTÉ TV, RTÉ Radio, and with the National Symphony Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra. They have worked with artists of the highest calibre including Joyce DiDonato, André Rieu, Liam Lawton and Gavan Ring.

Leinster String Quartet

The Leinster String Quartet (Deirdre Reddy violin, Rachel Grimes violin, Niamh Roche viola, Aoife Dennedy cello) was formed in 2017, having gained over 20 years’ experience individually as freelance musicians in Ireland. Collectively they have performed at the Three Arena, Electric Picnic and All Together Now with artists such as Kygo, Father John Misty, Ed Sheeran, The Coronas, Westlife and Michael Bublé. Individually they have performed nationally and internationally with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra Ireland. Their repertoire is extensive and cutting edge, and many of their arrangements are original and exclusive to LSQ.

Andreja Malir

Andreja began her studies with Sheila Larchet Cuthbert before going to study at the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands with Professor Edward Witsenburg. She has been principal harpist with National Symphony Orchestra Ireland since 1988 and in that time has performed with the orchestra numerous times as soloist, exploring many of the instrument’s major concerti, including a concerto commissioned by the orchestra from composer Philip Martin, which she recorded on the Marco Polo label to critical acclaim. Andreja has enjoyed considerable success in the fields of solo, chamber and concerto performances both at home and internationally, touring as far afield as China, Canada, America and all over Europe.

Mary Amond O’Brien

Mary is a passionate and highly motivated choral music facilitator and conductor who from the beginning of her career in 1997 engages regularly in her own professional development. Believing strongly in the innate singing ability of all children, young people and adults, Mary has worked with many non-auditioned singers and choirs who achieve high standards of performance while demonstrating the power of group singing to connect, excite, challenge and transform singers and their audiences. She was appointed music director of Cór na nÓg in 2011 and was the founding conductor of Cór Linn in 2018.

Carole O’Connor

Carole is a first-class honours graduate of DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama and UCD, where she respectively completed performance and Masters degrees. She furthered her organ studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and was awarded a PhD by DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama. She has studied with Anne Leahy, Una Russell, Siobhán Kilkelly, Mary Lennon and David Adams. Carole has given solo recitals throughout Ireland, including Galway Cathedral, St Patrick’s Cathedral, St Michael’s Church, Dun Laoghaire, the Unitarian Church, St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral and the National Concert Hall. As an organ duo with Patrice Keegan, she has performed in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork and St Teresa’s Church, Clarendon Street as part of the 2019 Pipeworks Festival. In 2021, she presented The Music of Jeanne Demessieux in Pipeworks from the Loft 2.0, and was artistic director of Dún Laoghaire Summer Organ Concerts for the 2021 and 2022 series. Carole teaches organ and piano in Blackrock College. She is the accompanist for two of the National Concert Hall’s choirs, Cór na nÓg and Cór Linn, and is organist of St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row.

Seán Doherty

Seán is an award-winning Irish composer whose captivating compositions are fast becoming a favourite of choirs worldwide. His music has a deep connection to the text, often with strong moral and social themes. Seán’s work has been described as ‘unfailingly gripping’ (Irish Times) and ‘music of power, subtlety and richness’ (Josep Vila i Casañas: World Youth Choir). Seán’s choral works have been performed by the Stellenbosch University Choir, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, New Dublin Voices and the World Youth Choir. His music has also garnered numerous awards including the Choir and Organ Magazine composition competition and Béla Bartok Competition, Hungary. Seán is an assistant professor of music in Dublin City University, where he leads a Masters in Choral Studies with his colleague Dr Róisín Blunnie. He is active as a choral singer, singing with the internationally acclaimed chamber choir New Dublin Voices, who have premiered many of his works.

Marian Ingoldsby

Marian was born in Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary. She studied composition with Gerald Barry at University College, Cork, graduating with an MA in Composition and winning the Fleischmann Prize in 1995. She is currently a lecturer in the music department of Waterford Institute of Technology. She has been commissioned by many organisations worldwide, including Opera Theatre Company, the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland/Ulster Orchestra and Pearls before Swine, Sweden. Awards include the Macaulay Fellowship (1995) and, in 1996, the first Elizabeth Maconchy Composition Fellowship tenable at the University of York. This enabled her to undertake a DPhil in Composition with Nicola LeFanu which she completed in 2000. Cór na nÓg recently performed her very entertaining piece On the Ning Nang Nong, which they loved!

Sue Furlong

Sue was born in Waterford, but spent most of her adult life in Wexford, where she was at the heart of the music and choral community. Sue’s early years as a composer saw many pieces published by GIA, and in 2001, her Mass of Thanksgiving won first prize in RTÉ’s National Church Music competition. Subsequently, writing for children became her great passion, with commissions from choirs worldwide. In 2005/06, Boosey & Hawkes published Sue’s collection of 40 Irish songs, D’Aon Ghuth (With One Voice), Volumes 1, 2 and 3. Boosey & Hawkes also published a selection of songs from The Dancing Master called Peace Songs from County Wexford in 2006. D’Aon Ghuth songs are widely used across the spectrum of music education in Ireland, and are regularly heard at children’s choral festivals. She was conductor of the Wexford Festival Singers from 1998–2006 and founded the award winning, mixed choral group Vocaré. She died in January 2018 but lives on through her wonderful music.

Ciarán Kelly

Ciarán, originally from Derry, is currently Head of Music at King’s Hospital School in Dublin and Musical Director of the Guinness Choir, as well as music director with Cór Linn. He is a former Assistant Director of Music at St Mary’s Pro Cathedral and the Irish International A Cappella Festival. He has released numerous albums with Ardú, an award-winning vocal group he founded in 2014 and for whom he has arranged a large number of songs. Ciarán’s training with the VOCES8 Foundation in London led to workshops in the UK, Europe and Asia where he worked in schools and universities as well as with choral societies and professional singers. He has worked as a singer and educator with many choral organisations, such as Sing Ireland, National Youth Choir of Great Britain, Anúna and Chamber Choir Ireland.

His collaboration with Carl Corcoran for A Child of the Universe is a continuation of a long-standing partnership: ‘Carl and I are always discussing new ideas, and indeed working independently on any number of projects. Carl has endless energy and passion for creating new music, which inspires me to continue looking for the next ‘musical exploration’. Our collaborations have evolved from arranging existing songs, to writing a brand-new pop song, to this epic project which has taken us both far musically, so who knows what the next steps will be – I am sure it won’t be long before Carl is on the phone with a new idea in any case!’

Carl Corcoran

Carl is a music industry professional whose extensive experience spans songwriting, publishing, management, performance and broadcasting. Carl Corcoran’s music career started in the mid 1970s when, under the moniker of Jamie Stone, he recorded three albums for EMI that featured original material and collaborations with various co-writers. In the late 1970s he moved to New York, where for 20 years he pursued a career in songwriting, publishing, management and performance. He also developed a passion for radio, which he continued on his return to Ireland in 1999, presenting shows on RTÉ Lyric FM and RTÉ Radio 1 including The Lyric Breakfast and the acclaimed late-night programme The Blue of The Night, until his retirement from RTÉ in 2017. Beyond his broadcasting experience, Carl spent five years as the inaugural Course Director of the MA in Songwriting in the Irish World Academy at University of Limerick (2017–2022). Following that tenure, he studied at Kingstown College in Dublin and was awarded a Professional Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring (with Distinction) in 2023.

Cór Linn - Singers

Aine McPolin

Alannah Davis

Anna O’Cathain

Antoni Panszczyk

Arthur Otchenashchenko

Artur Quintino Bernardo

Ava McEntee

Ava McKenna

Callum Duffy

Caoimhe Kavanagh

Cara O’Rourke

Catherine Leahy

Cillian O Mír

Clementine Xu

Colin Brown

Conor Byrne

Elizabeth Cantwell

Eloisa Rigo McSweeney

Emer Duffy

Eoin Devitt

Ewan McKenna

Filip Panszczyk

Finn Moran

Gracie Hourihane

Hannah Löfstrand

Holly Robbins

Isla Smyth-Graham

Jack Cahill

James Donohoe

Jay Xu

Joseph Tuliani

Kate McNamara

Katie Creggy

Kian Humphreys

Maebh Harte

Maebh Maguire

Maedhbh McCarthy

Marc Hooper

Matthew Leamy

Michael Kennedy

Molly O’Connell

Molly Verdier

Neasa McMenamy

Oisín Argaud

Oisín Govender

Olivia Ruiz Martinez

Ralph Gowran

Robert O’Brien

Roisin Tuliani

Seán Hynes

Sofia Quintino Bernardo

Sophie Gahan

Sophie Ko

Sophie Lawlor

Sophie McKenna

Cór na nÓg - Singers

Abby O’Halloran

Ailbhe Quinn

Ailbhe Sheehan

Amelia Rowan

Aoibhinn Galvin

Aoife Kenny

Arabella McGuinness

Bella Kinsella

Caitlin Cox Denti

Caoimhe Doyle

Cara Fortune

Catherine McGarry

Chaanrouy Nangsha

Christian Shine Walsh

Ciara Ní Almhain

Cillian Sheridan

Clara Ferguson

Clíodhna Walsh

Dilara Tuç

Ela-Marie Tuç

Eleanor O’Cathain

Elena Galvin

Ellen Graham

Emily Croughan

Emma Elliott

Eva White

Finn O’Brien Harte

Freya Cosgrove

Hugo Manschot

Isabel O’Cathain

Iseult O’Neill

Isobel Owens

Joni Scott-Mulcahy

Lily Pritchard Melvin

Lorainne Nangsha

Maeve Farrelly

Maeve Hynes

Mariia Khalikova

Mary Solyakov

Max O’Sullivan

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Maximilian White

Meadhbh Smith

Meadhbh Croughan

Naran Gillen

Nina Humphreys

Nora Verdier

Paul Manschot

Rebecca Mair

Rhett Long

Róisín Davey

Rosa Tottenham

Rose Pritchard Melvin

Rosie Clery

Saoirse Hennessy

Sarah McParland

Sibéal McCarthy

Síofra Palliser

Sophia Glennon

Yeukai Cadden-Doyle

Zuzanna Salakowska

A World in Itself

Sunday 6th April 2025 - 2pm

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

Catherine Lamb center/periphery (world premiere)

Rory Tangney New Work (world premiere)

Scott McLaughlin A World in Itself (world premiere)

Robert Curgenven on which the sun never sets (world premiere)

quiet music ensemble

Seán Mac Erlaine clarinets/sculptures

Roddy O’Keefe trombone/sculptures

Yseult Cooper Stockdale cello/sculptures

Dan Bodwell double bass/sculptures

Alexis Nealon sound engineer

Anna Murray managing director Programme Notes

There are many kinds of exploration and discovery, and they don’t all involve walking boots. In mindfulness meditation, for example, our curiosity about simply existing manifests in an engaged awareness of ourselves and all that is around us. Mindfulness turned in the direction of sound reveals not only the astonishingly beautiful cornucopia of sound that surrounds us but also the degree to which our inner state influences what we hear and how we hear it. Consider a kind of mindfulness that also requires the sonic equivalent of walking boots: we turn our attention to what is possible when we actively interact with others and with the physical and digital world. The four works in this programme ask us to do exactly this in distinct ways, whether it be a discovery of the sounds hidden within sculptural objects

or instrumental preparations, or a way of shaping our perception of the sonic world by questioning our place in it, or by experiencing the extraordinary complex of interactions created by complexes of simple tones. These pieces are about exploration, not statement; about wonderment more than self-expression; about learning. But perhaps the most important thing is that the spirit of discovery doesn’t end with the performers: you are not passive observers, but active participants. It is in the essence of this music that you may direct attention inwards and outwards: the piece is not merely happening in front of you - it’s also in the sounds from outside of the windows and in the play of light on the floor and in the rhythm of your own breath. You will perform your own act of discovery as you choose to direct your attention inside, outside in a myriad ways.

- John Godfrey

Catherine Lamb center/periphery (2025, QME commission, world premiere)

This is a collection of musical directives, an exploration into the intentionality and functionality of a musician’s relation between the center and the periphery. In this case, the directionality towards center is defined as particular harmonic fusion amongst the ensemble members, while acknowledging the threads that lead externally towards the individual experience of space and time.

peripheral / in between directives an individual musician fluctuates between the periphery (listening without their instrument), between-ness (listening through their instrument via the generation of sustained sound), and center (ensemble listening)

in any given moment, one may choose to move into an internal space, to an external space, or towards harmonic fusion, by producing harmonicity with others, which lies at the center

overall directionality is aimed towards approaching the center/harmonic space, while also navigating the peripheral zones of their instruments and the general atmospheric space

- Catherine Lamb

Rory Tangney New Work (2023, QME commission, world premiere)

This three-dimensional score takes the form of a sculptural installation to be interpreted by the players of Quiet Music Ensemble.

My practice is a largely intuitive one where I allow the materials to guide me through the work. In this case, it has resulted in a collection of diverse materials and objects that come together in a visual composition in the venue - a visual composition that can lead the players to some kind of sonic order in their response to it. The work will provide the group with various access-points for the players to enter the work. These may lean at times on structure, or on moments of colour, or texture or form. There is also an interactive element - aspects of the assembled material which can be used to generate sound, or to enhance sounds generated by the players.

- Rory Tangney

Scott McLaughlin A World in Itself (2024, QME commission, world premiere)

A world in Itself sets up sonic environments for each member of the ensemble to explore and get lost in. The palette for each instrument seems slight, but the techniques all operate with some level of instability, constantly opening up new paths and colours. The key instruction for the musicians is that ‘when you come back to what seems familiar, look for something new in it’, in terms of the world in your instrument but also in how the rest of the ensemble’s worlds might leak into yours.

- Scott McLaughlin

Robert Curgenven on which the sun never sets (2025, QME commission, world premiere)

The tuning system and the modular elements comprising this piece were devised at the Dublin City Council Arts Office residence in Temple Bar just after New Music Dublin 2023. The whole number ratios for the tuning system were selected because they produce no beating frequencies, leading them to act directly upon the body as a pressure, an engine that drives the piece forward – producing a corporeal procession of time. Between the modular elements, however, there are a host of beating frequencies that produce phase anomalies, overtones and perceived movement in the performance room relative to each other and the tones meticulously played by the Quiet Music Ensemble. While the commonly repeated phrase about having eyelids but not earlids has merit, it can be added that the ears and brain can disconnect from listening but the body can’t, the sensation of pressure persists. This piece is designed to have a particularly corporeal effect. ‘on which the sun never sets‘ uses modular elements from the London Open Form Pavilion of Air* – a geolocated audio work only accessible in Kensington Gardens, London – to produce a spatial composition for the Quiet Music Ensemble whilst still retaining the Open Form architectural concepts, devised by Oskar & Zofia Hansen in 1959, which informed the foundation of the 15 geolocated audioworks in the Open Form Pavilion of Air series.

*The London geolocated audiowork is located across a section of Kensington Gardens immediately west of the Serpentine Gallery with the Serpentine Pavilion to its’ east. The work’s design takes the form of a 160 x 160 metre arrow, pointing west to Ireland & the sunset. Invisibly occupying part of the Gardens, itself once a King’s playground, the work’s concept echoes & reframes the fading colonial notion of a ‘... vast [British] empire on which the sun never sets’ (the words of British colonial administrator Earl George Macartney in his ‘An Account of Ireland in 1773 by a Late Chief Secretary of that Kingdom’). The London work follows directly on from the NMD23 commission of

the Dublin Open Form Pavilion of Air, which is still accessible, covering the whole 4.5 hectares of Merrion Square, Dublin.

This diagram relates to the piece as a map that is approached in three directions at different junctures (top, middle and bottom) over the duration of the piece, that then arrive together at the end. The sounds – the modular elements – within each of the circles/zones gradually assume more of a hyperbolic paraboloid topology – as these zones progress ‘westwards’ (from right to left in the diagram) the gradation and movement of the sine tones within these modular elements become hyperbolic paraboloids, increasing in ‘steepness’ and taking on a surprising and more urgent timbre.

Biographies

Quiet Music Ensemble

Quiet Music Ensemble is Ireland’s premiere professional group dedicated to experimental and improvised music. Founded in 2009, the group has performed in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Poland and the USA; has been broadcast worldwide; and has released albums with Other Minds, Farpoint Recordings and Diatribe Records. In 2025, QME releases albums with Farpoint and UK label NMC. QME’s expert improvisors create fragile soundscapes, remarkable sonorities painted into pregnant silences, and deep sonic contemplation.

www.quietmusicensemble.com

‘In these deafening times, the very notion of ‘quiet music’ is something of a revolutionary act…’ - The Independent, UK ‘... delicately ambiguous, and entirely compelling’ - Journal of Music, Ireland

Rory Tangney

Rory Tangney is an Irish artist living and working in Dublin, with a part-time studio in Essex, UK. He has exhibited work nationally and internationally. Venues include The LAB Gallery Dublin, Sirius Arts Centre Cobh, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Galway Arts Centre, VISUAL Carlow, VOID Derry, Limerick City Gallery Of Art, FKL Symposium on Soundscape, Portoboseno, Italy, Temporary Gallery Berlin. He has also presented his work in non-art settings such as the National Concert Hall, Dublin and RTÉ Lyric FM.

Awards include an Arts Council Bursary, 2023; Sculpture Dublin Experiment! Award 2021; Arts Council Agility Award, 2021; The Arts Council Covid 19 Response Award, 2020.

www.rorytangney.com

Catherine Lamb

Catherine Lamb is an active composer exploring the interaction of tone, summations of shapes and shadows, phenomenological expansions, states between outside/inside, empathy, and the long introduction form. She currently resides in Berlin where she composes, teaches, and collaborates within the community (including Singing By Numbers and the co-initiated Harmonic Space Orchestra).

www.sacredrealism.org/artists/catherine-lamb

Scott McLaughlin

Scott McLaughlin is an Irish composer and improviser based in Huddersfield (UK). He started out as a shoegaze/experimental guitarist before studying music in his 20s at University of Ulster then MA/PhD University of Huddersfield (with Christopher Fox, PA Tremblay, Bryn Harrison and James Saunders). Currently, Scott lectures in composition at the University of Leeds. His music focuses on phenomena of sound, on contingency and indeterminacy in instruments, and performers responding to and working with that agency of the instrument. His work has been performed by Zubin Kanga, Heather Roche, Mira Benjamin, Explore Ensemble, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and others.

www.lutins.co.uk

Robert Curgenven

Robert Curgenven is an Ireland-based, Australian-born artist producing albums, performances and installations. Curgenven has produced works and installations for National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Poland (Krakow), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Palazzo Grassi (Venice), Transmediale (Berlin), Modern Art Museum of Medellin (Columbia), National Sculpture Factory (Ireland) and the National Film and Sound Archive (Australia).

Curgenven is an associate composer with the Contemporary Music Centre (Ireland), has produced radio works internationally including national radio in Australia (ABC Classic FM) and Ireland (RTÉ Lyric FM) and since 2008 has been a guest lecturer in music and sound.

www.cmc.ie/composers/robert-curgenven

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Blue Haze of Deep Time (Live)

Sunday 6th April 2025 - 4pm & 9.15pm

Promenade Performance: NCH Studio and other spaces

Jonathan Nangle Blue Haze of Deep Time (world premiere)

i. Bláth Bán

ii. Blue Haze of Deep Time

iii. Iridescent Oceans of Gold and White Granite

iv. Inbhear Glas

v. Marginal Sea

vi. Where Grey Waves Rise and Fall Unseen

Ryan McAdams conductor

Crash Ensemble

Larissa O’Grady violin

Lisa Dowdall viola

Kate Ellis cello

Malachy Robinson double bass

Susan Doyle flute

Leonie Bluett clarinet

Brian Bolger electric guitar

Alex Petcu percussion

Andrew Zolinsky piano

Colm O’Hara trombone

Francesca DeBuyl Production Manager

Adrian Hart Audio Producer

Elise Mollé FOH Audio

Laura Sheeran Movement Direction

Arden Tierney Stage Manager

Dan Tapper Visuals (JFR & Studio)

Krisjanis Berzins Lighting

Blue Haze of Deep Time was commissioned by Crash Ensemble with support from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon

Programme Notes

Jonathan Nangle draws inspiration from his field recordings of the sea, made during walks near his home in Dublin. These sounds form the foundation of the piece, marking the start of a musical journey. Much like Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, each movement represents a distinct moment in time, inviting the listener to experience the colours, rhythms, and textures of the sea. The titles of the movements – Bláth Bán, Blue Haze of Deep Time, Iridescent Oceans of Gold and White Granite, Inbhear Glas, Marginal Sea, and Where Grey Waves Rise and Fall Unseen – reflect Nangle’s personal connection to the locations and emotions evoked by these sounds. Jonathan aims to share these moments with the audience, stirring emotions and memories that resonate universally, alongside visuals created by Dan Tapper.

Blue Haze of Deep Time (2021–2025) marks the culmination of Nangle’s residency with Crash Ensemble, following a collaboration for Crash Ensemble’s 10th Anniversary in 2007, the release of his debut album Pause (2017, via Ergodos) performed by Crash, and a commission as part of the [REACTIONS] series in 2022. This is Nangle’s first commission for the full ensemble.

The piece takes the form of a full-length concert created in close partnership with Crash Ensemble during Nangle’s residency. The concert will be presented in promenade style, where the audience moves through different spaces at the National Concert Hall as each movement is performed An installation created during Nangle’s residency will also occupy the foyer throughout the festival, featuring recorded audio of Blue Haze of Deep Time alongside a video by Stephen MacDevitt and audio sculptures by Rory Tangney.

Biographies

Jonathan Nangle

Jonathan Nangle is a composer whose work spans a wide range of fields, including notated acoustic and electro-acoustic composition, live and spatially distributed electronics, video, field recordings, interactive sound installations and electronic improvisation.

Born in Dublin, Jonathan graduated from Trinity College, where he studied composition under Donnacha Dennehy and Rob Canning, as well as electro-acoustic composition with Roger Doyle. He has also studied privately with composer Kevin Volans.

His compositions have been commissioned and performed internationally by various ensembles and musicians, including the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Crash Ensemble, Signum Quartet, Dublin Guitar Quartet, Chatham Saxophone Quartet, Irish Youth Choir, violist Jennifer Stumm, violinist Darragh Morgan, cellist Marc Coppey and pianist Thérèse Fahy.

Jonathan has represented Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers twice. In 2009, his piece our headlights blew softly into the black, illuminating very little received a commendation, and in 2011, his first orchestral work now is night come quietly was showcased.

His music has been released by several record labels, including Ergodos, Diatribe, Crash Ensemble, RTÉ Lyric FM, Contemporary Music Centre Ireland, and Metier Divine Art. Additionally, it has been featured at various festivals, choreographed for film and stage, and broadcast internationally on radio and television. His debut album, Pause, which includes compositions for strings and electronics performed by Crash Ensemble, was released in July 2017 on the Ergodos label and received critical acclaim.

Currently, Jonathan serves on the composition faculty at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and is an artist-in-residence with Crash Ensemble.

Ryan McAdams

Equally at home in the world of opera, symphonic repertoire and contemporary music, American conductor Ryan McAdams has established a presence on both sides of the Atlantic. A contemporary music advocate, Ryan is the Principal Conductor of Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s foremost contemporary music group. Together they regularly perform at the National Concert Hall’s New Music Dublin Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Following the revival and tour of Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s latest opera The First Child for Irish National Opera, which had been highly successful at the Galway International Arts Festival, Signum has recorded the production and the CD is due to be released later this season. Together they also premiered The Second Violinist by Dennehy/Walsh and took the opera to the Barbican in London and to Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.

After spending the summer leading Saratoga Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, Ryan returns to the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, followed by conducting Beatrice and Benedict at the Irish National Opera. Throughout the 2024/25 season he will deepen his relationships with various Italian orchestras and the pianist Mikhail Pletnev. His collaboration with Crash Ensemble will continue to realise exciting projects throughout the season.

Ryan was the first-ever recipient of both the Sir Georg Solti Emerging Conductor Award and the AspenGlimmerglass Prize for Opera Conducting. He was a Conducting Fellow at Tanglewood and an Assistant Conductor at the Aspen Music Festival. The post of Apprentice Conductor at Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival was created for him. As a Fulbright scholar, he served as Apprentice Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, assisting then-Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert. Ryan studied at The Juilliard School and Indiana University. When Ryan is not travelling, he lives in Brighton, UK, with his wife, the dancer and theatre artist Laura Careless, and their son.

Krisjanis Berzins

Dublin-based lighting and production designer originally hailing from Latvia, Krisjanis Berzins works internationally with renowned touring artists and corporate clients alike. He has vast experience in stage lighting, video projection, LED walls, video mapping and multimedia production.

Dan Tapper

Dan Tapper is an artist and creative technologist interested in the intersection between information and experience. His current projects include building sonic VR environments and using machine learning to create new forms of divination.

Crash Ensemble

Siân Cunningham CEO • Kate Ellis Artistic Director • Pete Deane Ensemble Manager • Louise Barker Marketing Lead

Crash Ensemble is Ireland’s leading new music ensemble: a group of world-class musicians who play the most adventurous, groundbreaking music of today. Led by cellist and Artistic Director, Kate Ellis and Principal Conductor, Ryan McAdams, the ensemble commissions, explores, investigates and experiments with a broad spectrum of music creators and artistic collaborators. It also puts community at the centre of its mission, and enjoys creating experiences – exploring new ways of presenting music and taking audiences on new adventures. Many well-known artists from diverse musical backgrounds have performed with the ensemble, including Terry Riley, Gavin Friday, Dawn Upshaw, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Laurie Anderson, Lisa Hannigan, Íarla Ó Lionáird, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, Sam Amidon and Beth Orton.

As well as performing throughout Ireland, Crash regularly performs internationally, with appearances in the last few years at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Tech, GAIDA Festival and residencies at The Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival and Princeton University.

The ensemble’s music is available on their own label, Crash Records and they have recordings on Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, NMC, Ergodos and Bedroom Community labels.

For further details, visit: www.crashensemble.com/about

Crash Ensemble is strategically funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, revenue funded by Dublin City Council and receives international touring support from Culture Ireland. Crash Ensemble is a resident ensemble at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland, and Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.

Did you know that Crash Ensemble is a not-for-profit organisation and rely heavily on funders and donors to do the work they do? If you haven’t checked it out yet, please explore their Crash Circle and consider becoming a friend of Crash: www.crashensemble.com/support

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland/Dublin City Council

A Memory

Sunday 6th April 2025 - 5.30pm

Kevin Barry Recital Room, National Concert Hall

Siobhán Cleary Andalusian Dog (1996)

Gemma Peacocke A Memory (2022)

Edgar Varèse Density 21.5 (1936-1946)

Judith Ring The River Was Never Afraid (2024)

Keiko Abe Wind In the Bamboo Grove (1984)

Stephen Gardner Eagle Feather (2025 - world premiere)

Deborah Cheetham Permit Me (2020)

Joan Tower Petroushskates (1980)

Evlana Ensemble

Sylvia O’Brien soprano

Keith Pascoe violin

William Dowdall flute

Isabelle O’Connell piano

Paul Roe clarinet

David McCann cello

Alex Petcu percussion

with special guest Paula Meehan

Programme Notes

Siobhán Cleary Andalusian Dog (1996) for solo violin

In 1996, I was commissioned by the Cineteca de Bologna to write the score for the 1928 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou. The score consisted of cinematic music for violin and piano. As the film imagery was so vivid, I felt the music had to take a quieter, less intrusive role. However, I felt there was more to be said about the film and I wrote this piece, which could be played after the film as a sort of comment or independently as a concert piece. The opening of the piece is programmatic and taken from the film score. It accompanies the famous eye-slitting scene. Thereafter the piece reflects the chaotic energy and bizarre imagery of Dali’s and Brunuel’s masterpiece.

- Siobhán Cleary

Gemma Peacocke A Memory (2022) for soprano, flute, clarinet in B-flat, violin, cello, piano, percussion

For me, Lola Ridge is a haunting – and haunted – figure. A celebrated poet and activist in her lifetime, her death from tuberculosis in 1941 was marked in a New York Times obituary, but she has since been largely forgotten in her adopted country and her homeland.

Rose Emily Ridge was born in Ireland in 1873, and after the deaths of her father and siblings, she emigrated with her mother to the West Coast of New Zealand. As a young woman, she married a Kanieri gold miner and had two sons, the first of whom died when he was two weeks old. Ridge left her husband to move to Sydney with their son Keith, where she studied painting. After her mother died, she moved again, leaving Keith in a San Francisco orphanage and reinventing herself as Lola Ridge, an unmarried woman a decade younger than her true age. She settled in Greenwich Village in New York City and lived an ascetic lifestyle, publishing poetry and engaging in political activism. In 1935 she won a Guggenheim Fellowship and she was acknowledged as one of the leading poets of her generation.

Among Ridge’s radical feminist and anarchist verse, and her well-known portraits of immigrant populations and the writhing poverty of New York City’s tenements, she wrote tender, wrenching poems about motherhood, love and death. I am fascinated by her brave, unconventional life in the first part of the 20th century, and the contradictions between her deeply emotional writing and her steely public persona. Ridge erased and rewrote her own biography several times during the course of her life, yet she was transfixed in her poetry by memories of her childhood in New Zealand and her early adulthood in Australia.

I decided to set ‘A Memory’, which was published in The Ghetto and Other Poems (B.W. Huebsch, 1918), because it is such an extraordinarily beautiful, sultry and unabashedly romantic poem recalling a single evening in the author’s life.

- Gemma Peacocke

Edgard Varèse Density 21.5 (1936– 1946) for solo flute

Composed in 1936 and revised in 1946, Density 21.5 is one of the seminal solo flute works of the 20th century, showcasing Edgard Varèse’s pioneering approach to sound and musical structure.

The piece was written for the debut of a new platinum flute, with its title referring to the metal’s density (21.5 grams per cubic centimetre).

Although brief, Density 21.5 is an intensely expressive work that pushes the flute to its technical and timbral limits. Varèse explores extremes of register, sharp dynamic contrasts, and a sense of sculpted, almost architectural musical form. The piece unfolds in a highly gestural manner, with rapid leaps, angular lines and moments of striking lyricism set against forceful, percussive attacks. Despite its solo instrumentation, Density 21.5 carries the same raw energy and radical spirit that define Varèse’s larger works for ensemble. The flute becomes an instrument of exploration, embodying the composer’s lifelong fascination with pure sound and sonic possibilities. This work was highly influential, foreshadowing many later developments in solo instrumental writing and inspiring generations of composers and performers.

- Siobhán Cleary

Judith Ring The River Was Never Afraid (2024) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano

Focusing on the role of the River Suir as it flows through the town of Clonmel, I became aware of its various functions throughout the centuries. It is part of a trio of rivers called The Three Sisters, together with the Nore and the Barrow. As Clonmel is a walled town with Gates to the north, east and west, the River Suir historically acted as the fourth line of defence to the south of the town. This fact fascinated me, and I tried to encapsulate its defensive power alongside its natural beauty in this piece. We are taken on a journey through various imaginary happenings inspired by the river’s flow through time. The title was inspired by a poem by Nikita Gill entitled ‘Water’. One of the lines from this poem is, ‘the water was never afraid’. I thought it was the perfect fit for this piece and altered the line to make it more relatable to the subject matter.

- Judith Ring

Keiko Abe Wind In the Bamboo Grove (1984) for solo marimba

One of her earliest works, Abe composed this piece from the memory of feelings and sensations she felt when she visited a bamboo forest. The work is a good example of Abe’s compositional style, which contains elements from Western and Japanese traditions. About half of the piece uses harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements representative of the Western influence. The other half – the introduction and cadenza – is marked at a slow tempo, with unmeasured sections and loosely related figures performed in a more improvisatory style.

- Siobhán Cleary

Stephen Gardner An Eagle Feather (2024) for soprano, flute, violin and piano

Eilish Cleary was a pioneering doctor, becoming Chief Medical Officer for the province of New Brunswick. She highlighted areas of environmental health and received several awards for this work. When she was seconded to West Africa in 2014 to work on fighting Ebola, Eilish noted that ‘living in caring societies is good for people’s health’. Caring for others, and particularly those that were often neglected, was a feature of her life. She dedicated a lot of time to the health of The First Nations community, and, in 2010, they presented her with an Eagle Feather.

The text for this work is the beautiful poem ‘An Eagle Feather for Doctor Eilish Cleary’ by Paula Meehan. I tried to capture some of the evocative imagery and tenderness expressed by Paula. This work is a tribute to Eilish.

- Stephen Gardner

Deborah Cheetham Permit Me (2020) for solo cello

2020 posed so many challenges for us all. We were tested in ways we could not have imagined. For me, the curfews and permits imposed as Melbourne entered stage-four lockdown triggered a reaction I had not anticipated.

I should have seen it coming but I didn’t.

My grandparents lived with curfews and permits for decades under the tyranny of the Aboriginal protection board. Of course I have long known this family history. I wrote an opera about it, but it was not until I experienced a taste of the deprivation they lived with that I truly understood.

The need to gain a permit to travel further than five kilometres from my Melbourne apartment has left a deep mark on me. It has changed me.

All I can do is respond in music.

- Deborah Cheetham

Joan Tower Petroushskates (1980) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano

The title Petroushskates combines two ideas that are related to this piece. One refers to Stravinsky’s Petroushka and the opening Shrovetide Fair scene, which is very similar to the opening of my piece. The celebratory character and the busy, colourful atmosphere of this fair provides one of the images for this piece. The other is associated with ice skating and the basic kind of flowing motion that is inherent to that sport. While watching the figure skating event at the recent Winter Olympics, I became fascinated with the way the curving, twirling and jumping figures are woven around a singular continuous flowing action. Combining these two ideas creates a kind of carnival on ice – a possible subtitle for this piece.

- Joan Tower

Biographies

Evlana

Evlana’s inaugural concert took place at the University Church Dublin in 2015 with support from the Arts Council. This concert was later broadcast on Lyric FM. It featured several Irish premieres including Changing Light (Kaija Saariaho), Zipangu (Claude Vivier) and Taromirs Tid (Karin Rehnqvist) and the world premiere of Siobhán Cleary’s Her Kind for soprano, piccolo and string orchestra. Evlana prioritises music of our time but also engages with repertoire of previous centuries. Commissioning new works is integral to the objectives of Evlana as well as providing opportunities for repeat performances.

A chamber ensemble concert was held at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2018 featuring music by Tailleferre, Lili Boulanger, Messiaen, Saariaho and Takemitsu and the Irish premiere of Siobhán Cleary’s Ondine. It was subsequently broadcast on Lyric FM’s Sound Out.

In 2021, Evlana made their New Music Dublin debut at three concerts which included works by Judith Ring, Donnacha Dennehy, Amanda Feery, Gráinne Mulvey, Ian Wilson, Linda Buckley, Elaine Agnew, Deirdre McKay, Raymond Deane, John Buckley and world premieres by Jane Deasy and John McLachlan (Evlana/NMD commission). 2022 saw Evlana perform a concert with writer Michael Harding at King House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon and a four-venue tour of Ireland funded by the Arts Council Touring Award, which took Ravel’s Ondine as its starting point of a 100-year survey including works by Rebecca Clarke, George Walker, Nino Rota, Toru Takemitsu, Keiko Abe and Kaija Saariaho.

In April 2023, Evlana performed a concert at New Music Dublin which included works by Solfa Carlile, Fergus Johnston, Seoirse Bodley, George Crumb, Missy Mazzoli, Pamela Z and a new Evlana/NMD commission by Jenn Kirby. In May 2023 at the NCH, Evlana performed a concert featuring work by Jessie Montgomery, Jonathan Nangle, Jane O’Leary, John Corigliano and Cassandra Miller with funding from the Arts Council Arts Grant Fund. In November 2024, Evlana took a concert of works by composers involved in the First Peoples Project to Cork and Dublin. March 2024 saw the group performing a concert at Finding a Voice Festival (including the world premiere of a FAV commission by composer Judith Ring and the premiere of the winning piece in the FAV/CMC Emerging Composer Competition by Cathy Purcell).

In April 2024, the Evlana Sinfonietta performed on the main stage of NCH for New Music Dublin. This programme for string orchestra included works by inti figgis-vizueta, Ryan Molloy, Karin Rehnqvist, Claude Vivier and the world premiere of a work by Rhona Clarke (Evlana/NMD cocommission). In 2025, Evlana’s events include performances at Finding a Voice and New Music Dublin Festival, as well as CMC’s Spring Gathering, the Hugh Lane Gallery and Kaleidoscope Night. www.evlana.com

Siobhán Cleary

Born in Dublin in 1970, Siobhán Cleary’s work has been performed and broadcast worldwide. She has been commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Choir Ireland and the Vanbrugh Quartet among many others. Her critically acclaimed opera Vampirella based on a story by Angela Carter premiered in Smock Alley in 2017 and ran for four nights to a sold-out house. Her work has been featured at New Music Dublin, Horizons, Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland‘s year-long celebration of Irish arts in the United States in 2011 and Imagining Ireland 2020 at the NCH and the Barbican. Siobhán has also written the music for films and documentaries including the score for two Roger Corman feature films. In 1996, she worked with the Ciniteca di Bologna writing music scores to restored films.

Recent premieres and commissions include works for the Dublin International Chamber Festival, Vox Clamantis for Louth Contemporary Music Festival, SplinterReeds, Crash Ensemble, New Dublin Voices, Isabelle O’Connell, Elizabeth Hilliard, Nathan Sherman and Alex Petcu, Úna Monaghan and filmmaker David Smith. She is currently working on a piece for violin and orchestra for Darragh Morgan commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and a monodrama, Circe (text by Frank McGuinness).

She is the founder and Artistic Director of Evlana Ensemble and Sinfonietta. Siobhán was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists in 2008.

www.siobhancleary.com

Gemma Peacocke

Gemma Peacocke is a composer from Aotearoa, New Zealand whose work spans a wide range of genres, including chamber music, orchestral works and multimedia collaborations. Peacocke’s music frequently explores themes of identity, haunting, folklore and feminism, combining contemporary classical elements with electronics and experimental techniques.

Peacocke is a co-founder of the Kinds of Kings composer collective, which aims to amplify underrepresented voices in new music. Peacocke’s music has been performed internationally, with significant performances by groups like Third Coast Percussion, eighth blackbird, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Rubiks Collective and Alarm Will Sound. Her debut album, Waves & Lines, sets the powerful poetry of Afghan women in I Am the Beggar of the World, Pulitzer Prize-winner Eliza Griswold’s collection. Released on New Amsterdam in 2019, this haunting song cycle has been performed on stages from Roulette Intermedium and National Sawdust in New York to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Melbourne Recital Centre in Australia.

Peacocke lives in a very old farmhouse in a tiny town in central New Jersey with her family and her biggest fan, a gnashy standard poodle called Mila. She also spends as much time as possible in New Zealand.

www.gemmapeacocke.com

Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) was a French-born composer who became one of the most radical musical innovators of the 20th century. Often described as the ‘father of electronic music,’ he was fascinated by new sounds and technologies, envisioning music as ‘organised sound.’ After studying in Paris, he moved to the United States in 1915, where he developed a highly original musical language, rejecting traditional melody and harmony in favor of bold, sculptural explorations of rhythm and timbre. His works, including Ionisation (1931) for percussion ensemble and Poème électronique (1958) for tape, revolutionised the way composers approached sound.

Though his output was small, Varèse’s influence was immense, shaping the course of 20th-century avant-garde music and inspiring composers from Stockhausen to Frank Zappa. His visionary ideas about electronic and spatial music continue to endure today.

Judith Ring

Judith Ring was born in Dublin in 1976. She graduated with a MPhil in Music and Media Technologies from Trinity College Dublin in 2000, where she studied with Donnacha Dennehy and Roger Doyle. In June 2009 she completed her PhD in composition at the University of York, England, studying with Ambrose Field and Roger Marsh. She was awarded the Elizabeth Maconchy fellowship from the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon to fund her PhD.

Over the years her work has been commissioned and performed by numerous ensembles in Europe and North America including Concorde, Crash Ensemble, Bradyworks (Canada) and Percussemble (Germany). She has also worked/recorded closely with a large number of musicians such as Kate Ellis (cello), Malachy Robinson (double bass), Michelle O’Rourke (mezzo-soprano), Nora Ryan (mezzo-soprano), Garth Knox (viola), Natasha Lohan (mezzo-soprano), Rolf Hind (piano), Paul Roe (clarinet), Jane O’Leary (piano), Laura Moody (cello), Beau Stocker (percussion), Damien Harron (percussion), Panayiotis Demopoulos (piano), Valerie Pearson (violin), Elisabeth Smalt (adapted viola), Nathalie Forget (ondes Martenot), Andre Leroux (tenor saxophone) and many more.

Her work has been used for numerous dance pieces for Dance Theatre Ireland and The Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds among others. She has also written for short films and video pieces such as Clare Langan’s Glass Hour, for which she co-composed the soundtrack with Jürgen Simpson. In 2010 she composed the music for Simon Doyle’s play OFF PLAN which ran for two weeks at Project in Dublin.

Her piece Accumulation won first prize in the 2000 Concorso Internazionale Luigi Russolo in Varese, Italy. The piece was subsequently performed in Dublin, Belfast and at EXPO 2000 in Hannover, Germany. In December 2002, while living in Berlin, she received a scholarship from Akademie der Künste, to attend their Sommer Akademie in Museumspark Rüdersdorf. She released her debut album What Was on Ergodos records in 2014 and this can be purchased at

www.ergodos.ie

Keiko Abe

Keiko Abe is a Japanese composer and virtuoso marimba player, instrumental in developing both the marimba’s musical role and its design. She began playing at 12 after hearing an American missionary group, and later earned a degree in music education. Initially performing popular music in a marimba trio, she transitioned to contemporary classical music in 1962, playing with the NHK Orchestra and hosting music programmes on Japanese TV and radio.

In 1963, Yamaha selected Abe to help design new marimbas, refining their sound for ensemble use and expanding their range to five octaves, now the soloist standard. She remains closely associated with Yamaha, which named its first signature keyboard percussion mallets after her.

A prolific composer, her works, including Michi, Variations on Japanese Children’s Songs, and Dream of the Cherry Blossoms, are marimba repertoire staples. She champions marimba literature by composing, commissioning and mentoring young composers. Currently a professor at the Toho Gakuen School of Music, Abe was the first woman inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame and pioneered six-mallet technique. Among her former students is the noted percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

Stephen Gardner

Stephen Gardner studied music at the universities of Ulster and Wales from 1984 to 1990. His first commission was Wanting, not Wanting for the Ulster Orchestra in 1992 (this showed an early desire to express his response to the conflict in the North). Since then, his works have been performed worldwide.

To date, he has composed 12 works for orchestra. A CD of three of these was released to critical acclaim by RTÉ in 2013. A key to the development of his ensemble writing was the relationship established with Concorde, directed by Jane O’Leary, resulting in seven works. He has also written a series of choral works (with financial support from The Arts Council).

Compositions include No Prayers, Nor Bells (2016) for orchestra, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Battle of The Somme, and a quartet of songs for voice and piano (2016) for the mezzo-soprano Carolyn Dobbin, Jerk (2017) for Crash Ensemble, Guttersnipe (2018) for Hard Rain Ensemble, Innocent (2018) for Te Deum Adoramus Choir in Sofia to celebrate their 20th anniversary. In the past few years he has taken an interest in collaborative works where he is the overall composer and pieces are developed with ensembles over a period of several months, resulting

in Ulysses Extended in 2018 and The Gift in 2019. Also premiered in 2019 was the ensemble work Clockwork Soldiers. This formed part of a portrait concert in Sofia.

A new orchestral work Deliverance was premiered in May 2022 as part of the New Music Dublin festival. Another collaborative work, Crossing the Threshold (based on the poem by Paula Meehan), took place in June 2022, with Sylvia O’Brien, soprano. Later that year saw another collaborative project, The Belly of the Earth (also using poems by Paula Meehan), resulting in two performances at Smock Alley Theatre. This work was performed by jazz musicians. 2023 saw works for the Norwegian Ensemble KammerKlang, and one for electronics, bass clarinet and voice called Willow. The Tyranny of Time was premiered by Hard Rain Ensemble in 2024. Also premiered in 2024 were The Brahmdel Variations for piano, and Two tunes in the traditional style.

Works to be premiered later this year are a duo for clarinet and piano, and a set of three songs, based on Yeats poems, for baritone and piano.

He was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of artists, in 2003.

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon

Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer and educator, has been a leader and pioneer in the Australian arts landscape for more than 25 years. In the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Cheetham Fraillon was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), for ‘distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance’.

In 2009, Cheetham Fraillon established Short Black Opera as a national not-for-profit opera company devoted to the development of Indigenous singers. The following year she produced the premiere of her first opera, Pecan Summer. This landmark work was Australia’s first Indigenous opera and has been a vehicle for the development of a new generation of Indigenous opera singers.

In March 2015 she was inducted onto the Honour Roll of Women in Victoria and in April 2018 received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia for her pioneering work and achievements in music.

Cheetham Fraillon’s Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace, premiered to sold-out audiences oncountry at the Port Fairy Spring Festival in October 2018 and at Hamer Hall in Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on 15 June 2019.

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s list of commissions for major Australian ensembles includes works for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Australia String Quartet, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Rubiks Collective, The Sydney Philharmonia, Plexus Collective, the Goldner Quartet and Flinders Quartet.

Joan Tower

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than 60 years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor and educator. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo and Muir quartets; soloists Alisa Weilerstein, Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, Paul Neubauer and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore,

Nashville, Albany NY and Washington D.C. among others. Her recent commissioned premieres include the cello concerto A New Day, the orchestral 1920/2019, and the chamber Into the Night.

In 2020 Chamber Music America honoured her with its Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award; Musical America chose her to be its 2020 Composer of the Year; in 2019 the League of American Orchestras awarded her its highest honour, the Gold Baton. Tower is the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of 65 orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony recorded Made in America in 2006 (along with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra). In 2008 the album collected three GRAMMY awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance. Nashville’s latest all-Tower recording includes Stroke, which received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

In 1990 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Silver Ladders, a piece she wrote for the St. Louis Symphony where she was Composer-in-Residence from 1985–88. Other residencies with orchestras include a 10-year residency with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (1997–2007) and the Pittsburgh Symphony (2010–11). She was the Albany Symphony’s Mentor Composer partner in the 2013–14 season. Tower was co-founder and pianist for the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players from 1970–85. She has received honorary doctorates from Smith College, the New England Conservatory and Illinois State University. She is Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972

Paula Meehan

Paula Meehan is one of Ireland’s most celebrated poets and playwrights, known for her lyrical, deeply resonant work exploring memory, nature, social justice, and personal and collective history. Born and raised in Dublin’s north inner city, her poetry is rooted in a strong sense of place and community.

Her poetry collections include Reading the Sky (1986), Pillow Talk (1994), Dharmakaya (2001), Painting Rain (2009), As If By Magic: Selected Poems (2020), and The Solace of Artemis (2023), which won the Pigott Prize for Poetry. Her long poem Geomantic (2016) was honoured with a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry.

She has collaborated extensively with musicians, visual artists and dancers, including Christy Moore’s recording of Folk Song and Dragana Jurišić on Museum, a poetic response to No. 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin’s Tenement Museum.

Her powerful poem The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks, which gives voice to a teenage girl who died in tragic circumstances, remains one of her most widely recognised works.

Beyond poetry, Meehan has written for the stage and for radio, with Music for Dogs: Works for Radio showcasing her engagement with spoken and performed word. A dedicated mentor, she has led workshops in universities, prisons and recovery programmes.

From 2013 to 2016, she served as Ireland Professor of Poetry, the second woman to hold the role. Her lectures from the Chair were published by UCD Press. She was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s affiliation of distinguished artists, in 1996.

RTÉ Concert Orchestra w/Chamber Choir Ireland

Sunday 6th April 2025 - 7.30pm

Main Stage, National Concert Hall

Olga Neuwirth ‘…miramondo multiplo…’ for Trumpet and Orchestra (2005/06) (Irish premiere)

Ed Bennett Concerto for Piano, Keyboards and Orchestra (world premiere)

Irene Buckley Lament for Art O’Leary (live premiere)

Gavin Maloney conductor

Clément Saunier piccolo trumpet

Xenia Pestova Bennett piano

Kim Sheehan soprano

Emma Nash soprano

Chamber Choir Ireland

RTÉ Concert Orchestra

Programme Notes

Olga Neuwirth ‘…miramondo multiplo…’ for Trumpet & Orchestra (2005/06)

Distant Sounds and ‘Musical Stories’: Olga Neuwirth’s …miramondo multiplo…

‘The trumpet’s combination of air and metal, to put it simply, together with my attachment to jazz –Miles Davis was my great role model – made it possible for me to sound austere and bold, but also quite melancholy and aloof.’ (Olga Neuwirth in conversation with Bernhard Günther, 2004)

In the work of the Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, born in 1968, the solo use of the trumpet is always connoted very personally, a trait closely linked to her fascination since early childhood with the sound of the instrument which she preferred by far to that of the rather unloved piano. From her seventh year she began playing the trumpet and consequently intended to pursue a career as a Jazz trumpeter. However, the prospect of this was denied by a car accident at the age of 15, as a result of which she had to give up the instrument.

Olga Neuwirth’s new composition …miramondo multiplo… for trumpet and orchestra is clearly to be understood as an homage to ‘her’ instrument, to which she has for some years repeatedly been dedicating a central solo role within her works. Thus, in the film-music project The Long Rain (2000), realised in collaboration with the director Michael Kreihsl, as well as in the purely instrumental version entitled Construction in Space (2001), the trumpet is projected, by virtue of its exposed placement, from a group of four soloists, while in the music theatre piece Lost Highway (2002/03) the central figure proves to be the trumpeter who makes his instrument into the bearer of a dramatically significant sound symbol, and in the ensemble piece spazio elastico (2006) the unmistakeable sound of the trumpet is once again positioned in the centre of the musical process.

Following the seven-movement locus…doublure…solus for piano and ensemble or piano and orchestra (2001) and the single-movement zefiro aleggia… nell’infinito… for bassoon, orchestra, and tape (2004), …miramondo multiplo… is the third work in a group of compositions at whose centre is an enquiry into the nature of the ‘concert’, the diverse possibilities of reciprocal influence of an instrument acting soloistically and the larger apparatus of an ensemble or orchestra, and the musical processes and compositional structures resulting from these foundations. In terms of sound, the new composition is based on a confrontation between a solo trumpet and a large orchestra, the latter consisting of two flutes, two oboes, three clarinets, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, a tuba, three percussionists, eight each of first and second violins, six violas, six ‘celli, and four double basses. Although this instrumentation does indeed appear as a concentration of sound, such as at the opening of the work, it is far more frequently deployed with great sonic differentiation and occasionally in the service of an extremely intimate chamber music effect.

Through this approach to instrumentation, a situation begins to emerge of a relationship between the two sound bodies of soloist and orchestra in no way characterised by competition or musical antagonism but rather by mutual respect for the inherent musical colourations of each. In the same measure, as the composer conceals the traditional concerto form behind her own formal conception, so ‘distinct relationships between the individual and the group, not as a contest but based on co-operation, democratisation and exact collective listening,’ (Neuwirth) come to the fore. Musical stimuli are sustained and exchanged mutually in the context of a fertile dialogue, an example of which can be seen at the opening of the work but which is also to be found in a comparable form in other parts of the piece: a tutti chord, played triple forte is set like a musical colon; out of this emerges the distinct sound of the trumpet, which then develops into a brief cantilena, whose unfolding then shortly afterwards induces the entry of brass and percussion.

That this is indeed far more than a conventional solo concerto, a genre whose dramaturgical

conception, according to tradition, allies the soloist with the orchestra while at the same time asserting the technical ability of the former, can be seen with regard to the title and formal character of …miramondo multiplo… : the name of the work alludes to a richness of perspective (‘multiplo’) in the act of contemplating the world (‘miramondo’) which from the outset embraces a kaleidoscopic multiplicity of worldly wisdom, hereby expressing an abundance of moments which appear as almost phantasmagorical. The musical process of the composition can be perceived just as diversely, as each of the five movements is characterised by an independent musical atmosphere. The designation ‘aria’ common to all the individual sections of the work – i.e. aria dell’angelo, aria della memoria, aria dal sangue freddo, aria della pace, and aria del piacere – is here to be understood less as relating to a concrete formal model than as evoking a far more fundamental connotation of the word: the ‘atmosphere’ and the linguistically apt ‘air’, in the sense of ‘melody’. These concepts also symbolise the role of the solo instrument, in that they refer to the fundamental elements of the discourse: the air necessary for the process of tone production and the melodic unfolding of the instrumental voice which is here granted a central role.

Olga Neuwirth’s composition essentially involves a sequence of five very different ‘musical stories’ on a basis of artfully interwoven sound settings. To these is added a layer of interlaced quotations, which may indeed appeal to a level of semantic understanding but need not necessarily be recognised, as the music also functions without knowledge of them. Embedded within the interaction between soloist and orchestra, these fragments and quotations, including from the composer’s own works such as the music theatre piece Lost Highway, from works by George Frideric Handel, or with echoes of Miles Davis’ particular style of performance, suggest that the five movements may be heard as ‘sound images’ set out with rich associations, in whose course blurred scraps of memories emerge and then disappear. The differentiatedly constructed sound panorama of the second movement is particularly representative: the refined chains of dabs of sound colours such as trills, harmonics, and tremolo and glissando motions together yield a shimmering soundscape full of inner motion, which is subject to constant modulations in volume. The varied play with the foreground and background of perception results from the close integration of the solo trumpet in this movement, whose part for brief moments repeatedly breaks out of the framework of the orchestral texture and presents flashes of fragments of musical memory – as if the wind might carry sounds to the listener from afar. The productive interrelationship between soloist and collective is at the same time evident, as the trumpet initiates musical processes in the orchestra or conversely is inspired by the orchestra to specific utterances.

The atmospheric effect of such finely developed timbral structures stands in contrast to repetitive elements with distinctive rhythms, which – often appearing in the form of gesturally modelled loops – impart an impression of stasis. Alongside a number of passages in the first movement, broad sections of the aria dal sangue freddo are representative of this: placed at the centre of the composition, their jagged contours develop by virtue of the interlaced rhythmic structures a strongly unsettling effect of ‘cold-bloodedness’. The fourth movement contrasts this outburst with a world of piano sounds: played by the trumpet alone, a lengthy melodic line is unfolded, with which the clarinets are initially contrapuntally interweaved before a quotation from a Handel Chaconne is stated in the orchestra, which in the further course of the music increasingly dissipates in a fabric of additional voices and gradually disappears within the orchestral textures. It is precisely here that the characteristic cooperation of soloist and orchestra, in the sense of almost ‘tender’ reciprocal interplay, is fleshed out. At the end of the work, the fact that in spite of such dialogical structures the final word falls to the individual in the guise of the soloist – he emancipates himself from a trio formed together with both orchestral trumpets – has nothing to do with a musical triumph of the solo trumpet over the orchestral body of sound. It proves itself much more as an artistic deference to the individuality of someone who does not conform but allows himself to be stimulated – not consumed – by the collective.

- Stefan Drees

Ed Bennett Concerto for Piano, Keyboards and Orchestra (2024/25)

When writing my Concerto for Piano, Keyboards and Orchestra, I kept wondering what the piece might be called, what was it about? In the end I realised it was about the piano, the person playing it, the orchestra and my relationship to these things. As composers, we seem to be constantly under pressure to say what our music is ‘about’ as if the music itself doesn’t say enough. For me, music is about varying degrees of energy, vibration and perhaps transcendence from the everyday. So here, I want to be a bit old-fashioned perhaps, and defend the abstract. I don’t want to put a story or image into your head, I don’t want to describe what happens and spoil the fun, I want you to find your own way or simply get lost in the music. I want to create a world and allow the listener to enter it with their own imagination.

I will tell you that the piece is in three parts and uses other keyboard instruments in addition to the piano, but you’ll have to wait and hear how that pans out. Concerto for Piano, Keyboards and Orchestra was commissioned by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and New Music Dublin and was composed during my time as a fellow at the Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany. It is dedicated to Xenia Pestova Bennett, who premieres it tonight.

- Ed Bennett

Irene Buckley Lament for Art O’Leary

Lament for Art O’Leary, a new opera by Irene Buckley, is performed here by Kim Sheehan and Emma Nash. The opera’s text is by poet Vona Groarke, who translated the 18th-century ‘poem that isn’t quite a poem’, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. This hauntingly powerful new opera turns Eibhlín Dubh’s red-hot grief from over 230 years ago into a powerful present-day lament. This is Irene Buckley’s first ever opera, and the work was recorded in Studio One of the RTÉ Radio Centre in Donnybrook, featuring the artists who reprise their roles during this performance: soloists Emma Nash in the role of Eibhlín Dubh Ni Chonaill and Kim Sheehan as Art’s sister, singers from Chamber Choir Ireland, and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, conducted by Gavin Maloney.

Biographies

Olga Neuwirth

Olga Neuwirth was born in Graz, Austria, in 1968. She studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. During her stay in the States she also attended an art college, where she studied painting and film. Her private teachers in composition included Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail and Luigi Nono. She first burst onto the international scene in 1991, at the age of 22, when two of her mini-operas with texts by Elfriede Jelinek were performed at the Wiener Festwochen; since then her artistic practice includes a multiple aesthetical experience taken from film, literature, the everyday-life, visual arts, architecture and science.

Highlights include Clinamen/Nodus for Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra (2000); Lost Highway, based on the film by David Lynch, which was premiered in 2003 and won a South Bank Show Award for the production presented by English National Opera at the Young Vic in 2008; the premiere in Sweden of Aello-ballet mécanomorphe for flutist Claire Chase and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, subsequently performed at the BBC Proms in London.

Among numerous prizes, she was the first-ever woman to receive the Grand Austrian State Prize

in the category of music in 2010. She was awarded the Robert Schumann-Preis für Dichtung und Musik in 2021, as well as the prestigious Wolf Prize together with Stevie Wonder. In 2022 she was the recipient of the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. Olga Neuwirth was appointed as a composition professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria in Autumn 2021.

Ed Bennett

Irish composer Ed Bennett’s music is performed and broadcast in over 30 countries in venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican and Southbank Centres and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Over the last 25 years he has created a substantial body of work for a variety of contexts including those for the concert hall, opera, dance, installation and film. Recent highlights include Psychedelia for the RTÉ NSO and Thomas Adès, Ausland for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Reinbert de Leeuw, Song of the Books for Crash Ensemble and five critically-acclaimed portrait discs of his work.

He directs his 10-piece ensemble Decibel, described in The Quietus as ‘blending the coiled concentration of the best post-minimalism with the ferocity and dynamic range of thrash metal.’ His recent portrait CD Psychedelia (2020) was described in The Sunday Times as ‘ebullient, deeply compelling music’ and featured in The New York Times as one of their recommended releases of 2020, whilst The Guardian described his work as ‘unclassifiable, raw-nerve music of huge energy and imagination.’

In 2019 Ed Bennett was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award, the highest honour awarded to an artist from the region. For his body of creative work he received the prestigious Leverhulme Prize for Performing Arts, and his music has been twice shortlisted for the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2024 he was elected to Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland honouring artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland. He is currently a fellow at the Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Bavaria for the 2024/25 season, and is composition professor at the Royal College of Music in London. Future projects include new work for New York’s Bang On a Can Allstars and an evening-length work for singer Michelle O’Rourke.

Irene Buckley

Award-winning composer Irene Buckley is active across many music disciplines including choral, opera, orchestral, dance, theatre, film and electronics. Her score for Nothing Compares (cocomposed with Linda Buckley) has received a Cinema Eye Honor nomination for Outstanding Original Score and an IFTA nomination for Best Original Music. Her film score for The Swing was nominated for Best Original Music at the Festival International du Film d’Aubagne, France. She has received commissions from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Irish National Opera, Cork International Film Festival and Union Chapel, London. Irene has focused on composing live scores for silent films, which include The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Fall of the House of Usher, and also Nosferatu and Metropolis (both co-composed with Linda Buckley). These have had performances in venues such as Glasgow Cathedral for Glasgow Film Festival, Union Chapel London for Organ Reframed Festival, Brookfield Place, NYC for SilentFilms/LiveMusic Series and Zwinglikirche, Berlin (with Gudrun Gut).

Recent collaborations include The Tower with Jesse Jones and Ritual with Junk Ensemble. Irene holds a PhD in Composition and a BMus from University College Cork and an MA in Music Technology from Queens University Belfast. She attended Composition courses in the USA, Latvia and the Netherlands, alongside film scoring courses under Screen Training Ireland.

Gavin Maloney

Gavin Maloney is Associate Principal Conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. He also has a longstanding relationship with the National Symphony Orchestra and Choirs. He received his training at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the Mozarteum, Salzburg. At the age of 21 he successfully competed for the position of Assistant Conductor of the then RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. He was the inaugural beneficiary of the Bryden Thomson Trust, through whose support he studied at the Danish National Opera and the Lucerne Festival Academy of Pierre Boulez.

Gavin has conducted all the leading orchestras and ensembles in Ireland. He has also conducted in Germany, France, Italy, and the UK. In 2017 Gavin featured for the first time in the International Concert Series of Dublin’s National Concert Hall, appearing with Maxim Vengerov, who has described him as ‘a great maestro’.

Gavin’s recordings, on the NMC and Lyric FM labels, have earned critical acclaim, including that of Gramophone magazine. Gavin has worked closely with Crash Ensemble and the EQ Ensemble, and for three years he directed the National Symphony Orchestra’s signature contemporary music series, Horizons. His ballet credits include Swan Lake with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Ireland’s national ballet company. Gavin’s concerts have been broadcast by the BBC, RTÉ, the European Broadcasting Union, Shanghai East Radio, and radio stations in North America and Australia. Gavin lectures in Conducting and Analysis at the RIAM.

Clément Saunier

Clément Saunier studied under Clement Garrec and Jens McManama at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) where he won his first prizes in trumpet and chamber music. His performances at international soloist competitions have earned him several major prizes. In 2013, he joined the Ensemble intercontemporain with which he performed a large number of solo works from the repertoire for trumpet, including Hans Werner Henze’s Requiem, Richard Ayres’ NONcerto, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza X, Yan Maresz’s Metal Extensions and Metallics, Yann Robin’s Doppelgänger, Liza Lim’s Wild Winged One. He has made a number of albums, including several 20th-century concertos for trumpet and orchestra, released by Cristal Records, Maguelone and Corelia, as well as the album Directions, released on the Klarthe label. Clement Saunier teaches at the Conservatoire de Lyon (CNSM).

Xenia Pestova Bennett

Described as ‘a powerhouse of contemporary keyboard repertoire’ (Tempo), pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett has earned an international reputation as a leading proponent of uncompromising music. Her work spans a wide range of sound worlds, styles and genres from classical to contemporary art music, free improvisation, experimental electronica and avant-pop. Since receiving the unanimous First Prize at the Xavier Montsalvatge International Piano Competition in Girona, Spain and prizes at the Messiaen International Piano Competition in Paris and the KeriKeri Piano Competition of New Zealand, Xenia has performed in over 20 countries, at international festivals, in concert halls, tropical rainforests, caves, ponds and countless weird and wonderful venues and spaces. She explores classical music boundaries with electronics, toy pianos, synthesizers and the magical and mysterious Magnetic Resonator Piano. As a composer, she is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland.

Emma Nash

Cork soprano Emma Nash has been described as ‘captivating’ (Irish Times) and praised for her ‘exciting, individualised vocal colour’ (Opera Today). She is an alumna of Opera Theatre Company’s Young Artist Programme and a recipient of the PWC/Wexford Festival Opera Emerging Young Artist bursary and the UCH Limerick Rising Star Award.

Upcoming engagements include performances as a guest soloist for the Cork Opera House 170th Gala Celebration, soprano soloist for the Irish premiere of The Wound in the Water with The Wicklow Choral Society, and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at Cork Opera House.

Emma’s recent collaborations include opera development workshops with Theatre Lovett and Off The Rails Dance Company. In concert, she has performed Brahms’ Requiem with the Monteverdi Choir and Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and toured Europe in Berlioz’s grand opera Les Troyens.

Her operatic roles span productions with Wexford Festival Opera, Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett, Welsh National Opera, Opera Collective Ireland and Longborough Opera Festival. She has also appeared in concert with leading ensembles such as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Monteverdi Choir, City of Dublin Chamber Orchestra and The Cork Concert Orchestra.

Emma is a featured artist in Body & Soul Festival’s film Ériu, alongside rappers MuRli and God Knows. The film premiered at the Lighthouse Cinema Dublin and is available to stream on RTÉ Player.

A longtime collaborator with composer Irene Buckley, Emma participated in the original Midsummer Festival development of Lament for Art O’Leary and premiered the role of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill in the RTÉ Lyric FM broadcast, accompanied by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Other projects with Buckley include The Passion of Joan of Arc (voice of Joan), performed live at the Glasgow Film Festival, Union Chapel London and Junction Festival Clonmel.

Chamber Choir Ireland

As the country’s national chamber choir, Chamber Choir Ireland holds a unique place in the cultural life of Ireland. Through broadcasts, streaming, and live performances, they bring the joy of worldclass choral music to over a million listeners each year. Chamber Choir Ireland has built a stellar reputation as Ireland’s premiere professional choral ensemble, with awe-inspiring performances at home and abroad. CCI’s programming is as diverse as it is daring, championing leading Irish and international composers through commissions and premieres.

CCI’s recordings are consistently met with critical acclaim. Based at Ireland’s National Concert Hall, the choir tours extensively throughout Ireland and internationally. Beyond the concert stage, CCI is deeply committed to working closely with communities across Ireland through its Learning and Participation activities. Chamber Choir Ireland receives principal funding from the Arts Council/ an Chomhairle Ealaíon, and support from Dublin City Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland through its National Lottery Fund. CCI is a resident ensemble at the National Concert Hall of Ireland, Associate Artists to Dublin City University, and a member of TENSO, the network of professional chamber choirs in Europe.

RTÉ Concert Orchestra

Founded in 1948, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra has a vibrant, eclectic repertoire encompassing popular, classical, jazz, traditional and more. It has performed with artists including Luciano Pavarotti, Lang Lang, Marvin Hamlisch, Lalo Schifrin and Sinéad O’Connor. A 90s dance music series with Jenny Greene won an IMRO Outstanding Achievement Award.

The RTÉ CO has performed in seven Eurovision Song Contests; film credits include Stephen Rennicks’ score to Room and Brian Byrne’s Golden Globe-nominated score to Albert Nobbs. Other recordings include Howard Shore’s A Palace upon the Ruins and Flicker with Niall Horan. Live to screen performances include the Ireland premiere of The Nightmare Before Christmas with Danny Elfman and the world première of Room with live score.

Work during the pandemic included Guy Barker jazz arrangements, an award-winning John Lennon tribute, a 50th anniversary Clannad celebration, a chart-topping single and a TV tribute to David Bowie featuring members of his own band. The Bowie project developed into live concerts in 2024 and 2025.

Other recent projects include Thin Lizzy Orchestrated, a rare combination of blues and orchestra in The Delta Blues Project, introduced by Morgan Freeman, and Max Richter’s Recomposed with Mari Samuelsen. Irish live premieres in jazz include Guy Barker’s Kind of Blue Orchestrated and the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong Porgy and Bess album. Having recently marked the Callas and Puccini centenaries, an upcoming highlight will be a Guy Barker night at the NCH on 10 April to mark the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby.

www.rte.ie/co

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland

Postcards (Screenings)

Thursday 2nd - Sunday 6th April 2025

Room 107

Paul Scully Escape Velocity

Emmelle Wadding Junk

Jenn Kirby Waves

Maeve Kelly X-change of Flames

Dani Larkin Lighthouse

Michael Sullivan Through Worlds of Fog

Neil O’Connor The Last Broadcast

Films by Laura Sheeran

Crash Ensemble

Susan Doyle flute

Leonie Bluett clarinet

Larissa O’Grady violin

Lisa Dowdall viola

Kate Ellis cello

Roddy O’Keeffe trombone

Alex Petcu percussion

Recorded by Jonathan Nangle at Kilkenny Arts Festival 2024

Edited, mixed and mastered by Brian Bolger

Made possible thanks to support from The Arts Council and Dublin City Council.

Programme Notes

Crash Ensemble, a group known for its fearless approach to contemporary music, continues to push boundaries with Postcards, a project that brings together bold new compositions and film. With a reputation for exploring fresh sounds and daring ideas, this event is a striking exploration of humanity’s relationship with the environment, weaving together themes of sustainability and climate action.

Postcards consists of a series of three-minute compositions by an eclectic group of creators: Dani Larkin, Emmelle Wadding, Jenn Kirby, Maeve Kelly, Michael Sullivan, Neil O’Connor and Paul Scully. Each piece explores critical environmental and existential issues, reflecting the urgency of addressing climate change and our impact on the planet.

As part of this project, Crash Ensemble commissioned Filmmaker-in-Residence Laura Sheeran to create accompanying visuals that beautifully interweave live visual stories with each piece.

Paul Scully Escape Velocity

‘Escape Velocity is an audio/visual work that explores ideas from the philosophy of ecology. In particular the inescapable irony that we as humans are causing climate change, the thing that will ultimately lead to our extinction. There is no escape velocity from this irony. The piece was conceived to be performed in total darkness, with lights illuminating the string players and snare drum, in sync with the sound. Much of the piece is silent, which means that much of the live experience is in total darkness.’

Emmelle Wadding Junk

‘Junk follows the journey of a discarded object flowing through our waterways as it is intermittently thwarted with aggressive deviations, growing ever more problematic as the damaging effects unfold. The duality of inspiration between AVAVAV’s 2023 fall/winter fashion show and Curtis Hylon’s Litter Bird mural lends to elements of chaos, being trapped, and altering our actions to compensate. The piece is written as a message to witnesses to remember the consequences their actions can have. We are all aware of the devastating effects of waste and pollution, but too often in our daily lives and the comfort of our own conveniences we can become blindsight to the impact our actions are having on the world and its natural inhabitants.’

Jenn Kirby Waves

‘I am fascinated with movement and I was thinking about how the movement of bowing is like the movement of waves. The collision and separation of waves like the ensemble as one instrument, then diffusing into separate voices. A video score guides the performers as they follow lines symbolising different temperaments of waves, from dissolving sea foam to the dense and relentless crashing against the cliffs. I’m interested in how we embody that movement.’

Maeve Kelly X-change of Flames

‘The discourse around the environment and climate change is complex, charged and polyphonic, and I’m particularly interested in the responses of people to the global warming argument. There

are so many different voices in the public sphere to evoke different reactions – the voices of politicians, scientists, activists and conspiracy theorists in our everyday lives summon feelings of urgency, outrage, fear, hope and existential dread. X-change of Flames explores this phenomenon in the online sphere, specifically on the platform X (formerly known as Twitter).’

Dani Larkin Lighthouse

‘A stark conversation between two strangers at a bus stop inspired the idea of sending a postcard to past, present and future ideas of the self. Lighthouse moves beyond the linear notion of time. It asks us to reflect on our relationships with the people around us, known or unknown. To move beyond a reality of strangers to one that recognises our shared humanity.’

Michael Sullivan Through Worlds of Fog

‘This piece is inspired by the concept of decay, drawing on the physical degradation of various materials and the anxiety over how a person’s beliefs and ideals can become compromised over time. This is reflected by the flute and cello mimicking the harmonic spectrum of the struck frying pans, with different frequencies fading at different rates. As the composition progresses, distortions gradually emerge, created by physically retracing earlier sections of the score and allowing natural changes to take shape.’

Neil O’Connor The Last Broadcast

‘The Last Broadcast uses morse code for durational/note length for directions. The electronics use acceleration/deceleration of tempo and the increasing/decreasing of density There are many things in the world of electronics that we take for granted. The Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) is quoted: Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. In the age of the self, the inspiration of the piece and title of the piece refers to the possibility of all communication devices disappearing and a return to the most basic use of tools of communication: the morse code.’

Biographies

Laura Sheeran

Laura Sheeran is a multidisciplinary artist and director from Galway, currently living in Dublin. Laura works mainly with sound, video, theatre and dance. Laura began working with Crash Ensemble in 2015, since then she has worked extensively with Crash filming performances, creating accompanying visuals for new compositions and live performances, documenting their processes and helping craft a visual identity for the band through performance direction.

Paul Scully

Paul Scully is a composer from Dublin, Ireland. His practice is interdisciplinary, borrowing from performance art, theatre, philosophy, literature, and visual art. Speech and language are often important features in his music. Much of his work is site-specific, and sometimes context-specific, considering the full gamut of an audience’s experience.

Recent works Will We Give it a Bash? and Everything’s Left That’s Worth Defence – both premiered in 2022 – seek to subvert the assumptions of the audience through playful, humorous, and often chaotic means.

He is the general manager of the experimental music ensemble Kirkos and runs their venue and artist space, Unit 44, in Stoneybatter, Dublin.

Emmelle Wadding

Emmelle [Elle] Wadding is a multi-genre musician based in the South-East of Ireland. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in composition at Trinity College Dublin where she holds an M.Phil. in Music & Media Technology, in addition to a BA (hons) in Music from WIT (now SETU), where she specialised in music technology and orchestral composition.

Elle is a contemporary composer and sound designer specialising in audio-visual perception and cross-modal composition. Much of her musical work has been in response to visual art, including theatre, photography and architecture. She has worked as sound designer for award-winning theatrical productions throughout Ireland and in 2023 was the assistant musical director for Tipperary’s largest ever theatrical production From Out The Land. Her past research has included building computer programmes that converts music played into a piano into visual components to enable closer audio-visual relationship understandings and learning experiences. Recently, she was commissioned to compose a new piece for Garter Lane Studios, which includes incorporating the newly renovated art-specific building into the viewing experience. Her research and music are fueled passionately with the intent of making contemporary art accessible. Her current Ph.D. aims to promote community engagement in contemporary music through street art.

Jenn Kirby

Jenn Kirby is a composer, performer and music technologist, who writes instrumental composition, electroacoustic music and live electronics. Jenn makes hybrid musical instruments using software, sensors and re-purposed controllers. Her music often engages with physicality and texture.

Maeve Kelly

Maeve Kelly is a composer, improviser and cellist based in Dublin, Ireland and is currently nearing completion of her DPhil in Music Composition under the supervision of composer Gráinne Mulvey at Technological University Dublin. Her area of expertise is the musical exploration and translation of lived experience, particularly in relation to socio-political and health related issues.

A socially minded artist, Maeve has a broad experience in arts administration and leading DIY art projects. From 2022–2023, Maeve was the director of the Irish Composers Collective, an organisation dedicated to providing emerging composers with a community and creating platforms for sharing new music. During her time with the ICC she directed a three-day festival, ICC Salon (2022) which facilitated the creation and premiere of 36 new works by ICC members involving collaborations with visual, film and dance artists.

Dani Larkin

Dani Larkin is a songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist currently based in Belfast. Her debut album, Notes For A Maiden Warrior (2021), received widespread critical acclaim and

catapulted Larkin to the international stage with performances at SXSW and WOMEX as well as tours with Snow Patrol, Lisa O’Neill, Glen Hansard and Rufus Wainwright.

Larkin has since collaborated with the Ulster Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra and released Walking With Natives (2023) which saw her tour Australia, Korea, Finland, Canada, Ireland and a run of sold out shows at the Irish Arts Centre NYC.

With television appearances on BBC 1, Virgin Media Ireland’s Fanning At Whelans, Canada’s CTV, alongside radio performances on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and RTÉ Radio 1, Larkin has accompanied her songwriting prowess with insights into story and song taking the listener on a pathway to the beyond.

With a profound performance at the RTÉ Folk Awards coupled with her tours in Europe, Australia, Asia and North America, Larkin has been heralded as a ‘must-see’ live performer on the national and international stage. Described as a ‘beguiling’ and powerful’, songwriter and ‘virtuoso guitarist’ (Songlines Magazine) Larkin’s live performances enrapture audiences in a seamlessly woven narrative within a carefully curated sonic landscape.

Michael Sullivan

Michael Sullivan is a composer, writer, and performer based in Dublin. In 2019, he graduated from Maynooth University with a BA in Music and Mathematical Physics. As part of an elective year studying electroacoustics in Montreal, he regularly performed with The Concordia University Laptop Orchestra.

He also worked with multiple dance ensembles as part of Studio 7, a monthly event showcasing experimental interdisciplinary performances. His contributions ranged from live instrumentation to creating music patches controlled by live movement and radio static. In recent years, Michael has worked as a sound designer and composer for various theatrical productions and podcasts. Notable projects include The Bootsy Boys’ Blackbird (Best Fiction –Winner – 2022 Irish Podcast Awards) and Chiron: A One Centaur Show (Spirit of Wit – Nominee –2023 Dublin Fringe).

Since 2018, he has also been involved in improvised theatre, performing in numerous festivals in Ireland and Europe, including Otherside Festival in Meath and the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2023, he wrote and performed in the absurdist play The Lead-Pipe Pigeon Brigade as part of the Scene and Heard Festival for new work. Musically and artistically he is most interested in non-traditional instrumentation, feedback loops, incorporating ideas from other creative disciplines, and playing with dream logic.

Neil O’Connor

Composer and performer Neil O’Connor has been involved in experimental and electro-acoustic music for the past two decades and has performed extensively in Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and the US. His work has been shown/performed at MOMA, New York, IRCAM Paris, Institute of Contemporary Art, London and has held residencies at the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, EMS – Swedish Institute of Electro-Acoustic Music, Stockholm, Sweden and the National Concert Hall, Dublin. He has worked/collaborated with members of Crash Ensemble, Phillip Glass Ensemble, Glenn Branca Ensemble, Bang On a Can Ensemble and the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. His electroacoustic works have won award and mentions at Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France), Euphonie D’Or des Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique (France), Musica Nova Electroacoustic Music Competition, (Czech Republic), Concurso Internacional de Música

Eletroacústica de São Paulo and had special jury mention at Prix Ars Electronica and Euphonie D’Or des Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique, Bourges (France).

Neil studied at Trinity College, Dublin (M.Litt/PhD Music) under composers Donnacha Dennehy and Roger Doyle. His primary training was in film where he studied at the National Film School, IADT, and has worked as a film composer and sound designer on numerous feature films, shorts and documentaries.

His work is represented in Ireland by the CMC (Contemporary Music Center), AIC (Association of Irish Composers), ISSTA (Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association), SMC (Spatial Music Collective), published by IMRO (Irish Musical Rights Organisation) and Scintilla Recordings.

Crash Ensemble

Siân Cunningham CEO • Kate Ellis Artistic Director • Pete Deane Ensemble Manager • Louise Barker Marketing Lead

Crash Ensemble is Ireland’s leading new music ensemble: a group of world-class musicians who play the most adventurous, groundbreaking music of today. Led by cellist and Artistic Director, Kate Ellis and Principal Conductor, Ryan McAdams, the ensemble commissions, explores, investigates and experiments with a broad spectrum of music creators and artistic collaborators. It also puts community at the centre of its mission, and enjoys creating experiences – exploring new ways of presenting music and taking audiences on new adventures. Many well-known artists from diverse musical backgrounds have performed with the ensemble, including Terry Riley, Gavin Friday, Dawn Upshaw, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Laurie Anderson, Lisa Hannigan, Íarla Ó Lionáird, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, Sam Amidon and Beth Orton.

As well as performing throughout Ireland, Crash regularly performs internationally, with appearances in the last few years at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Tech, GAIDA Festival and residencies at The Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival and Princeton University.

The ensemble’s music is available on their own label, Crash Records and they have recordings on Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, NMC, Ergodos and Bedroom Community labels.

For further details, visit: www.crashensemble.com/about

Crash Ensemble is strategically funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, revenue funded by Dublin City Council and receives international touring support from Culture Ireland. Crash Ensemble is a resident ensemble at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland, and Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.

Did you know that Crash Ensemble is a not-for-profit organisation and rely heavily on funders and donors to do the work they do? If you haven’t checked it out yet, please explore their Crash Circle and consider becoming a friend of Crash: www.crashensemble.com/support

Supported

Blue Haze of Deep Time (Installation)

Wednesday 2nd - Sunday 6th April 2025

Foyer of National Concert Hall

Jonathan Nangle Blue Haze of Deep Time (2021–2025)

Recording Credits:

Ryan McAdams conductor

Crash Ensemble

Maria Ryan violin

Lisa Dowdall viola

Kate Ellis cello

Maitiú Gaffney double bass

Susan Doyle flute

Leonie Bluett clarinet

Recorded by Ber Quinn

Brian Bolger electric guitar

Alex Petcu percussion

Andrew Zolinsky piano

Colm O’Hara trombone

Jonathan Nangle ocean drum

Edited, mixed & mastered by Brian Bolger

Recorded at Improvised Music Company’s venue, The Cooler at The Complex

Rory Tangney sculpture design and fabrication

Stephen Mac Devitt video

Essay by Donal Sarsfield

Blue Haze of Deep Time was commissioned by Crash Ensemble with support from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Programme Notes

Blue Haze of Deep Time (2021–2025), an installation created during Nangle’s residency, will occupy the foyer of the NCH throughout the New Music Dublin festival.

Jonathan Nangle draws inspiration from his field recordings of the sea, made during walks near his home and further afield. These sounds form the foundation of the installation, marking the start of a musical journey. Much like Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, each movement represents a distinct moment in time, inviting the listener to experience the colours, rhythms, and textures of the sea. The titles of the movements – Bláth Bán, Blue Haze of Deep Time, Iridescent Oceans of Gold and White Granite, Inbhear Glas, Marginal Sea and Where Grey Waves Rise and Fall Unseen – reflect Nangle’s personal connection to the locations and emotions evoked by these sounds. The installation presents the recorded audio of Blue Haze of Deep Time alongside a video by Stephen MacDevitt and audio sculptures by Rory Tangney.

Blue Haze of Deep Time (2021–2025) marks the culmination of Nangle’s residency with Crash Ensemble, following a collaboration for Crash Ensemble’s 10th Anniversary in 2007, the release of his debut album Pause (2017, via Ergodos) performed by Crash, and a commission as part of the [REACTIONS] series in 2022. This is Nangle’s first commission for the full ensemble.

Biographies

Jonathan Nangle

Jonathan Nangle is a composer whose work spans a wide range of fields, including notated acoustic and electro-acoustic composition, live and spatially distributed electronics, video, field recordings, interactive sound installations and electronic improvisation.

Born in Dublin, Jonathan graduated from Trinity College, where he studied composition under Donnacha Dennehy and Rob Canning, as well as electro-acoustic composition with Roger Doyle. He has also studied privately with composer Kevin Volans.

His compositions have been commissioned and performed internationally by various ensembles and musicians, including the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Crash Ensemble, Signum Quartet, Dublin Guitar Quartet, Chatham Saxophone Quartet, Irish Youth Choir, violist Jennifer Stumm, violinist Darragh Morgan, cellist Marc Coppey and pianist Thérèse Fahy.

Jonathan has represented Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers twice. In 2009, his piece our headlights blew softly into the black, illuminating very little received a commendation, and in 2011, his first orchestral work now is night come quietly was showcased.

His music has been released by several record labels, including Ergodos, Diatribe, Crash Ensemble, RTÉ Lyric FM, Contemporary Music Centre Ireland, and Metier Divine Art. Additionally, it has been featured at various festivals, choreographed for film and stage, and broadcast internationally on radio and television. His debut album, Pause, which includes compositions for strings and

electronics performed by Crash Ensemble, was released in July 2017 on the Ergodos label and received critical acclaim.

Currently, Jonathan serves on the composition faculty at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and is an artist-in-residence with Crash Ensemble.

Ryan McAdams

Equally at home in the world of opera, symphonic repertoire and contemporary music, American conductor Ryan McAdams has established a presence on both sides of the Atlantic. A contemporary music advocate, Ryan is the Principal Conductor of Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s foremost contemporary music group. Together they regularly perform at the National Concert Hall’s New Music Dublin Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Following the revival and tour of Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s latest opera The First Child for Irish National Opera, which had been highly successful at the Galway International Arts Festival, Signum has recorded the production and the CD is due to be released later this season. Together they also premiered The Second Violinist by Dennehy/Walsh and took the opera to the Barbican in London and to Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.

After spending the summer leading Saratoga Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, Ryan returns to the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, followed by conducting Beatrice and Benedict at the Irish National Opera. Throughout the 2024/25 season he will deepen his relationships with various Italian orchestras and the pianist Mikhail Pletnev. His collaboration with Crash Ensemble will continue to realise exciting projects throughout the season.

Ryan was the first-ever recipient of both the Sir Georg Solti Emerging Conductor Award and the AspenGlimmerglass Prize for Opera Conducting. He was a Conducting Fellow at Tanglewood and an Assistant Conductor at the Aspen Music Festival. The post of Apprentice Conductor at Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival was created for him. As a Fulbright scholar, he served as Apprentice Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, assisting then-Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert. Ryan studied at The Juilliard School and Indiana University. When Ryan is not travelling, he lives in Brighton, UK, with his wife, the dancer and theatre artist Laura Careless, and their son.

Rory Tangney

Rory Tangney is an artist based in Dublin. He has a multi-disciplinary practice with sculpture and installation art at its centre. His innovative practice explores materiality through an often experimental making process. He has exhibited widely throughout Ireland and his recent activities include a currently-running solo exhibition, Sing For Your Supper, at Ardgillan Castle, Dublin, as well as a solo exhibition, At The Still End Of The World, at the LAB Gallery Dublin in 2022. He has received numerous Arts Council Awards, and in 2021 was the recipient of the Sculpture Dublin Experiment! Award. Rory has a history of collaborating, often with artists of other disciplines such as musicians, composers and dancers.

Stephen Mac Devitt

Stephen Mac Devitt is an award-winning designer, director and educator who works across a range of disciplines as a visual artist. His studio practice is primarily focused on light, from large-scale projection mapping pieces to interactive installations, combining his 20 years’ experience creating animations, motion graphics, music videos and live visual performances. He teaches Moving Image Design at the National College of Art & Design.

Crash Ensemble

Siân Cunningham CEO • Kate Ellis Artistic Director • Pete Deane Ensemble Manager • Louise Barker Marketing Lead

Crash Ensemble is Ireland’s leading new music ensemble: a group of world-class musicians who play the most adventurous, groundbreaking music of today. Led by cellist and Artistic Director, Kate Ellis and Principal Conductor, Ryan McAdams, the ensemble commissions, explores, investigates and experiments with a broad spectrum of music creators and artistic collaborators. It also puts community at the centre of its mission, and enjoys creating experiences – exploring new ways of presenting music and taking audiences on new adventures. Many well-known artists from diverse musical backgrounds have performed with the ensemble, including Terry Riley, Gavin Friday, Dawn Upshaw, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Laurie Anderson, Lisa Hannigan, Íarla Ó Lionáird, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, Sam Amidon and Beth Orton.

As well as performing throughout Ireland, Crash regularly performs internationally, with appearances in the last few years at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Tech, GAIDA Festival and residencies at The Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival and Princeton University.

The ensemble’s music is available on their own label, Crash Records and they have recordings on Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, NMC, Ergodos and Bedroom Community labels.

For further details, visit: www.crashensemble.com/about

Crash Ensemble is strategically funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, revenue funded by Dublin City Council and receives international touring support from Culture Ireland. Crash Ensemble is a resident ensemble at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland, and Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.

Did you know that Crash Ensemble is a not-for-profit organisation and rely heavily on funders and donors to do the work they do? If you haven’t checked it out yet, please explore their Crash Circle and consider becoming a friend of Crash: www.crashensemble.com/support

Supported by RTÉ/NCH/Arts Council Ireland/Dublin City Council

New Music Dublin 2025 Schedule

THURSDAY 3RD APRIL

1:30pm - NCH Studio

BOMBAST! - Berginald Rash

3:30pm - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room

Surround Sounds: Irish forests, rivers & peatlands

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

6pm - NCH Studio

BlackGate - Caimin Gilmore

7:30pm - NCH Main Stage

Blood of A Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète)

Matthew Nolan & Erik Friedlander

9:30pm - The Complex, Smithfield (Buses leaving from NCH at 9pm)

PART 1: BAN BAM New Works Premiere

11pm - The Cooler, Smithfield

PART 2: Córas Trio

Kevin McCullagh, Paddy McKeown & Conor McAuley

FRIDAY 4TH APRIL

1pm - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room

Andreas Borregaard: POWER PLAY

2:30pm - NCH Studio

Crashworks 2025: You Heard It First - Crash Ensemble

4:30pm - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room

Dublin Fixations - John Butcher & Dublin-based Improvisors

7:30pm - NCH Main Stage

National Symphony Orchestra

Buckley, Pärt, Chin w/Olari Elts, Zolinsky & McGonnell

9:30pm - The Complex, Smithfield (Buses leaving from NCH at 9pm)

All Earth Once Drowned - Ed Bennett & Cherry Smyth

11pm – The Cooler, Smithfield

In The Dark - Secret duos from NMD artists

New Music Dublin 2025 Schedule

SATURDAY 5TH APRIL

10:30am - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room

Uilleann Pipes, Cello, & Gamelan

Peter Moran, Mark Redmond, Martin Johnson

1pm - Windmill QTR, Windmill Lane, Dublin 2

Brian Irvine & The Totally Made-Up Orchestra

2pm - NCH Studio

Agency: Dennehy & Vivier - Ficino Ensemble & Lotte Betts-Dean

4:30pm - Pepper Canister Church, Dublin 2

Refracting Light - Chamber Choir Ireland w/ Benjamin Goodson

7pm - NCH Main Stage

Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations - Thurston Moore

9pm - NCH Studio

The Blue Shroud - Barry Guy & The Blue Shroud Band

SUNDAY 6TH APRIL

10:30am - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room

Composer Development Workshop - Legato

12:30pm - NCH Main Stage

A Child of the Universe - Cór na nÓg / Cór Linn

2pm - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Room

a world in itself - Quiet Music Ensemble

4pm & 9:15pm - Promenade Performance: NCH Studio and other spaces

Jonathan Nangle: Blue Haze of Deep Time (LIVE)

Crash Ensemble

4:15pm - The Iveagh Room

The Culture File Debate: Quiet/Loud

5:30pm - NCH Kevin Barry Recital Rooms

A Memory - Evlana Ensemble

7:30pm - NCH Main Stage

RTÉ Concert Orchestra w/ Chamber Choir Ireland

Irene Buckley, Olga Neuwirth, Ed Bennett