THE WOODS AND GRANDMA, RTÉ LYRIC FM, LYRIC FEATURE
The most recent radio project I have been working on went out on Lyric on Sunday 15th September. It has been nominated under the Radio Music category for the Prix Italia and the Prix Europa. It has a sort of complicated plot but revolves around the verbatim pop opera of the same name by Cal Folger Day. There is some additional context here and you can listen back here
Physics has found no straight lines – has found only waves – physics has found no solids – only high frequency event fields. UNIVERSE IS NOT CONFORMING TO A THREE DIMENSIONAL PERPENDICULAR-PARALLEL FRAME OF REFERENCE. The universe of physical energy is always divergently expanding (radiantly) or convergently contracting (gravitationally). - Buckminster Fuller 1895–1983
Vanya and I have been working on this joint exhibition for around a year. It has been formed out of long walks in the countryside, telephone conversations, descriptions of colour, plants, walls and navigation markings. Vanya makes these wonderful forms out of a kind of modular origami. Nearly all of the sound for me has been inspired by Vanya's house in Sligo, we have spoken about spaces, interiors both internal and shared. If you are in and around Belfast in November, I hope this is going to be something beautiful and plain, simple and evocative.
Imagine a distant sound is something other than you know it to be
preparing to install Vanya Lambrecht Ward's folded birch veneer
Belfast in March
We're (the dublin laptop orchesta) working on a multi-channel set for the performance space in the Sonic Arts Centre in Belfast. There will be an afternoon gig on Sunday 1st of March as part of the Northern Ireland Science Festival. Get tickets here.
The following afternoon in McMordie Hall in Queen's I'll be talking at a seminar hosted by Recomposing the City.
Hibernation Radio
The Bluebottle Collective are running a month of radio podcasts for January. In the spirit of hibernation Gillian Fitzpatrick, Sharon White, Andrew Carson, Conor O'Toole, Thomas O'Keeffe and myself got together to knit, crochet, sew, talk and listen to music. It was all recorded in the most haphazard of ways and conversations bounced from philosophical considerations of cloning to the colour of wool. The podcast will go out on Monday 5th of january at an unknown time in the evening.
HEARsay Festival
A quick interview by Mike Glennon from the Contemporary Music Centre while down at the HearSay Festival in Kilfinane, Co Limerick
grass and nettles and briars
As part of John Lambert's Relay project, I've made a new piece called grass and nettles and briars. It is the next in a chain inspired by a piece by the artist Martin Howse.
Falling Backwards is an experimental music event taking place in an empty swimming pool as part of Amid the Deepening Shades at Deer Park Hotel, live performance Sunday 26th October 4-6pm
The Shape of Sounds to Come
How does sound affect our sense of place and can we use space to make music?
Sound is a physical form. Sound waves have physical dimensions and interact dramatically with architectural structures. The ear hears sound as vibrations brush against small hairs inside our heads. This tactile dimension to sound makes it inherently sculptural. As composers, we are creating vibrations that touch the listener not only in an emotional way but also in a very real physical way. The haptic context of sound has become a new element in architectural design, this programme explores this sculptural quality of sound amongst musicians, builders, makers and urban planners.
I am working on a radio documentary that will be broadcast on RTÉ Lyric FM with support from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. I've started a tumblr to gather some sounds and images from material I am working with here.
Happy New Year
Here is some news. I've added zyxyz (for alto sax and marimba) to the composition page as it was recently performed at the National Concert Hall by Alex Petcu and Carolyn Goodwin.
Unitled #2 will be screened at the Irish Film Institute on 15th January as part of Fractal's audiovisual programming. Buy tickets here.
A new Gamelan ensemble has started up and we'll have a performance on the 24th of January. It will be mostly new works and we've been working on something I've come up with called Cast-off. The piece was originally inspired by the onomatopoeic naming of the gamelan instruments and trying to find words that could match with the sounds of the instruments but it is also about the highly-patterned structure of traditional gamelan pieces. There is a knitting metaphor.
Also at the end of January I'll be starting a two-week residency as part of Performance Corporation's SPACE
NAISA Sound Travels Intensive 2013
Over the course of a week in Toronto's Wychwood Barns, I developed a piece called You Think You're Controlling in which I handed my smartphone over to the audience, who were then able to interfere with my performance using Touch OSC and Max MSP. Fellow participant Elliott Feinberg put together the following video, towards the end you can see a short excerpt.
This week was followed by an in-store performance in Oblique Records in Montreal with Eric Boivin. A collaboration between Eric, fourthousandblackbirds and visual artist Dominic F. Marceau has led to this audiovisual work.