MUSIC CURRENT 2016

7 April, 8pm

OSCILLATOR

Benjamin / Railton / Corker

John Lely, Part Music for Violin (for violin and mono audio)
Giacinto Scelsi, Duo (for violin and cello)
Railton/Corker, Improvisation (cello, oscillator, lock-grooves, delay lines and ring modulators)

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In homage to Scelsi's seminal DUO from 1965, Railton and Corker's improvisation on beating frequencies makes a refreshing antidote to contemporary digital glitch. And, in a nod to early Stockhausen, is performed on 'period instruments' – analogue sine-tone generators and delay lines.

Performers:
Mira Benjamin (violin)
Lucy Railton (cello)
Adrian Corker (oscillator, lock-grooves, delay lines, ring modulators)

Mira Benjamin is a Canadian violinist, researcher and new-music instigator. She performs new and experimental music, specialising in microtonal string performance practice. She actively commissions music from composers at all stages of their careers, and develops each new work through multiple performances. Most recently she has collaborated with Cassandra Miller, Martin Arnold, Richard Glover, Isaiah Ceccarelli, Amber Priestley, and Scott Mc Laughlin. Mira co-directs nu:nord, an international community-building project that engages artists from Canada, Norway and the UK. Originally from Vancouver, Mira lived for ten years in Montréal, where she was a member of Quatuor Bozzini. She moved to London in 2014.

http://mirabenjamin.com/

Lucy Railton is a cellist, curator and collaborator dedicated to performance and development of contemporary music. Recent solo appearances include performances at Wysing Festival, Oslo Hackney, Purcell Rooms, BBC Radio 3, Borealis Festival, and at HeK Basel with Russell Haswell. She is founder of Kammer Klang and co-founder and co-director of the London Contemporary Music Festival.

Photo: Lucy Railton, photocredit Dimitri Djuric

soundcloud.com/lucyrailton

Adrian Corker composes for many forces and media and has collaborated with many ensemble and soloists, including: the Nuremburg Symphony Orchestra, Elysian Quartet, Richard Skelton, Jack Wyllie and Chris Watson. He has written extensively for film, including projects with the late film director Antonia Bird. He recently curated and performed at MusICA: Exploring Sound and Authorship, a multi-media event based on the work of Giacinto Scelsi. He also has curated a series of gallery shows The Silence Between, featuring sound artists such as Jem Finer, Rie Nakajima and Liminal. He has performed at many venues including the Merkin Concert Hall New York, Kings Place and the National Portrait Gallery.

www.adriancorker.com

7 April, 9pm

THE TOTAL MOUNTAIN

Jennifer Walshe

Jennifer Walshe THE TOTAL MOUNTAIN (for voice and film with sound)

The Total Mountain is to do with living, thinking, making music, reading in the world we live in now after the advent of the internet and its integration into our lives... I do a lot of physical movements during the piece as well as stuff with my voice… The film part is very trashy. Lots of screen-grabs from Twitter, horrible pre-set menus from certain programs.*

Performers:
Jennifer Walshe (voice)

THE TOTAL MOUNTAIN was commissioned by German broadcaster SWR and premiered at Donaueschinger Musiktage, October 2014.

*(Jennifer Walshe, ATTN:Magazine, Aug 2015)

 

Jennifer Walshe studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes, Kevin Volans, Amnon Wolman and Michael Pisaro. In 2000 Jennifer won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis. She was a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm (2004-2005), and composer-in-residence in South Dublin County for In Context 3 (2006 to 2008). In 2007 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York. In 2008 she was awarded the Praetorius Music Prize for Composition by the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur. She is currently Reader in Music at Brunel University, London.

In addition to her activities as a composer, Jennifer frequently performs as a vocalist, specialising in extended techniques. Her works are performed widely by ensembles such as ensemble récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, ensemble Intégrales, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Schlagquartett Köln, Crash Ensemble, Con Tempo Quartet, Champ d’Action, and others.

www.milker.org

8 April, 8pm

SPOILS

Dublin Sound Lab

Fergal Dowling Spoils (for two Baroque violins, Baroque cello, harpsichord, recorded voice, interactive electronics, surround sound and video), 2016.

A concert-length meditation on myth and the frailty of language, SPOILS unfolds in parallel acts of excavation and reburial; each moment, in its own becoming, exhumes fragments of its earlier self, while reinterring itself beneath its own remains. A Baroque chamber ensemble – harpsichord, violins and cello – interact in a computer-mediated performance with surround sound, and video featuring Olwen Fouéré; music that is visceral, elemental and unworldly.

Performers:
Aoife Ní Dhornáin (Baroque violin)
Marja Gaynor (Baroque violin)
Ilse de Ziah (Baroque cello)
Michael Quinn (harpsichord)
Olwen Fouéré (recorded voice)
Fergal Dowling (computer)
Mihai Cucu (video)

Dublin Sound Lab is a contemporary music ensemble specialising in electronic and computer-mediated concert performance. As well as presenting established works, we initiate new repertoire and use computer-based techniques to explore new relationships between compositional process, performance practice and audience engagement.

Formed in 2008 by organist Michael Quinn and composer Fergal Dowling, DUBLIN SOUND LAB has worked with many leading Irish and international composers, performing works by: Ailis Ni Riain, Gérard Grisey, Salvatore Sciarrino, Kaija Saariaho, Luca Francesconi, Karlheinz Essl, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel, Wim de Ruiter, Ann Cleare, Scott McLaughlin, Barry Truax, Roderik de Man, Karen Tanaka, Jean-Claude Risset, Ed Bennett, Judith Ring, Gerald Barry, Jonathan Nangle, Jonathan Harvey, Rob Canning, Gráinne Mulvey, David Bremner, and Garth Knox amongst others.

In 2013 DUBLIN SOUND LAB performed Kaija Saariaho's seminal mixed-media work Maa with a newly commissioned video. The new work, Mirrors of Earth, was performed 9 and 14 November in Dublin and Bray. And in 2014 we commissioned and curated Places and Responses, a major collaboration involving Peter Ablinger, Gráinne Mulvey, Rob Canning and Piaras Hoban, for 2014 Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival.

Spoils developed with assistance from Dublin City Council Project Awards and Arts Council Music Bursary.

www.dublinsoundlab.ie

9 April, 8pm

CURRENTS

Solos +

Anna Murray, Switches, violin + electronics
Amanda Feery, Blessed Damned, cello + electronics
Richard Bailie, Three Suns, violin, cello + electronics
Rob Casey, Think David, walkman + cello
Brian Connolly, Waves, violin, cello + electronics
Karlheinz Essl, Sequitur III, violin + electronics
Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Flypaper, (fixed media)
Karlheinz Essl, Sequitur IV, cello + electronics
Gráinne Mulvey, Syzygy, cello + electronics

A two-part concert featuring new works developed by composers participating in the festival workshops, as well as Irish and international works for soloist and electronics.

Performers:
Mira Benjamin (violin)
Lucy Railton (cello)
Marja Gaynor (Baroque violin)
Ilse de Ziah (Baroque cello)
Fergal Dowling (computer)

Collaboration is a central tenet of Dublin Sound Lab's ethos, and we hope to establish Music Current as a 'space' wherein composers, instrumentalists, technologists and artists can collaborate to create and present new work. With the goal of collaboration and sharing, we ask composers, performers and music technologists to take part in Music Current, share your work and collaborate with our invited composers and instrumentalists to present your work in concert.

Composers can apply to participate in Music Current and to take part in masterclasses and workshops with Gráinne Mulvey, Anne Cleare and Jennifer Walshe. During the workshops, Gráinne Mulvey and Dublin Sound Lab will select works for any violin, cello and/or electronics, submitted by the participant composers, for inclusion in this programme. See the Participate section below for details on how to submit works and apply for participation in Music Current 2016.

Gráinne Mulvey is one of the most active composers working in Ireland today. An experienced and highly regarded teacher at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Gráinne is a central figure in Dublin's vigorous contemporary music scene. For this concert, Gráinne will select a short programme of new Irish works to complement the selected works by participant composers. More programme details will be published here in March 2016.

Ann Cleare

Ann Cleare studied at UCC (BMus MPhil) with John Godfrey and Jesse Ronneau, and at at Harvard University (PhD) with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku.

Her music has been performed in Europe, Australia, and America, in festivals such as The Gaudeamus Week (Holland, 2010), The Wittenertage fur Neue Kammermusik (WDR, Germany 2012), Horizons (Ireland, 2013), International Music Institute Darmstadt (Germany, 2014), Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik (Austria, 2014) and IMATRONIC Festival of Electronic Music (ZKM, Germany, 2014). She has worked with ensembles such as Ensemble SurPlus, Crash Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Collegium Novum Zürich, ELISION, RTÉ NSO, JACK Quartet, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Apparat, The Experimental Ensemble Freiburg, and soloists such as Carol McGonnell, Richard Craig, Heather Roche, Bill Schimmel, Benjamin Marks and Patrick Stadler.

Current projects include a new piece for The Talea Ensemble (MATA Festival, New York), a chamber opera for Taschenopernfestival (Salzburg, 2015), and new works for The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, clarinettist Carol McGonnell and The Argento Chamber Ensemble, flutist Richard Craig, ELISION, and Dal Niente.

http://annclearecomposer.com

Jennifer Walshe

Jennifer Walshe studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Kevin Volans in Dublin and graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition (2002). Her teachers at Northwestern were Amnon Wolman and Michael Pisaro. In 2000 Jennifer won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. She was a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2003-2004); and guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm (2004-2005). She was composer-in-residence in South Dublin County for In Context 3 (2006 to 2008). In 2007 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York. In 2008 she was awarded the Praetorius Music Prize for Composition by the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur. She is currently Reader in Music at Brunel University, London.

In addition to her activities as a composer, Jennifer frequently performs as a vocalist, specialising in extended techniques. Her works are performed widely by ensembles such as ensemble récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, ensemble Intégrales, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Schlagquartett Köln, Crash Ensemble, Con Tempo Quartet, Champ d’Action, and others.

www.milker.org

Fergal Dowling

Fergal Dowling is a composer, computer musician and ensemble director. He studied composition at Trinity College Dublin (BMus, 2000), (MLitt, 2002) and, with the aid of the Elizabeth Maconchy Composition Fellowship (2002), the University of York (PhD, 2006), and continues research in interactive audio performance, sound spatialisation and algorithmic composition. His works often combine computer-based interaction and sound spatialisation to engage the listener with a sense of immediacy, and draw on a variety of simple sound materials to create complex inharmonic textures.

His compositions have been presented widely at festivals and conferences, including: ISSTC 2014, Composition in the 21st Century (Dublin, 2014), Noise in/and/as Music, Huddersfield (2013), Atelierfrankfurt (2011), Música Viva (2010), Japan Electroacoustic Festival (2009), ISCM World Music Days (2009), Future Sonic (2007), and by many ensembles and soloists, including: Ex-Machina (Brazil), Projektgruppe Neue Musik Bremen, Grup XXI (Spain), Hear This Space (England), Acousmain (Germany), and notes inégales.

An active performer of computer music, he co-founded Dublin Sound Lab (2008), and has collaborated with many Irish and international composers and performers, including: Karlheinz Essl, Garth Knox and Peter Ablinger.

www.fergaldowling.com

 

Gráinne Mulvey

Gráinne Mulvey is one of the most widely performed Irish composers. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the Young Musician of the Future Award, (Composers Class) in 1994, the Macaulay Fellowship (Arts Council Of Ireland). She has received commissions from Concorde, the ACME Ensemble of Chicago, RTE NSO, Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra and The Northern Sinfonia. Her orchestral work has also been performed by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the Hradec Králové Philharmonic and the Orchestre De Lorraine. She has represented Ireland twice at the ISCM World Music Days (2008, 2009) and at the International Rostrum of Composers (1994, 2006).

Her works have been performed by Joe O’Farrell, Elizabeth Hilliard, David Bremner, Martin Johnson, Annette Cleary, Therese Fahy, Slawomir Zubrzycki, Matthew Schellhorn, Paul Roe, Dermot Dunne, and Mary Dullea.

She has been commissioned by RTE NSO for a cello concerto, and by The Dublin International Piano Competition. Many of her recent works develop her research interests acoustics, electro-acoustics and live electronics. She is a member of the Association of Irish Composers, Irish Music Rights Organization, the IAWM, Donne In Musica and Aosdána, Ireland’s organization of creative artists.

www.grainnemulvey.com

 

Arts Council

Dublin City Council

MusicTown

 

Contemporary Music Centre

The British Council

Arts Council of England

Studio 4

Smock Alley Theatre

 

Irish Composers Collective

Dublin Sound Lab