Art
Making contemporary music relevant
There was a palatable air of tension in the room as one of the other students confronted Leo, our business practice teacher, about the idea of a business plan. “I just don’t understand how this will help me be a better musician” seemed to be the undercurrent of his question. It’s not the point though.
I’ve been going to different entrepreneurial talks and courses for a few years now. I did a course in Trinity about monetising your research, one in UCD which was trying to get people back into the workforce and another at the So Percussion Summer Institute which was more focused on the arts. I got into them as I’m interested in building a business from my work as a musician. Read more
So Percussion performing ‘Dusk’
Last July I wrote my first percussion piece Dusk for the So Percussion’s Summer Institute. I’ve written about the festival at length in another post but suffice to say I had an amazing time, meet lots of interesting people and heard tons of percussion music. As part of the festival So Percussion performed Dusk at Princeton University and this week the Vic Firth featured a video of the performance on their YouTube. It was a load of fun working with those guys and Evan Chapman, the videographer, did a great job capturing the concert. Hope you enjoy.
‘it shimmers in the air’ at the Muziekgebouw
Last Saturday was the first performance of a piece I’d written since arriving in Amsterdam… and it happened in the Muziekgebouw! The piece called it shimmers in the air and was written for the Conservatorium van Amsterdam‘s newest ensemble Score Collective. It’s only the ensemble’s second performance and it’s an honour to have been asked to write for them.
Kate Ellis performing ‘In your own time’
Here’s a video of Kate Ellis performing In your own time at the Music and Media Technologies Show in May 2012. Kate did a really great job of turning a collection of ideas I came to the rehearsals with into something really wonderful. It was a real pleasure to hear what we had worked on come alive on the night.
Kate Ellis
Cellist Kate Ellis is a versatile musician dedicated to the performance and exploration of all new music. With an interest in the use of electronics, Kate has commissioned and premiered works by numerous Irish and International composers and has toured and broadcast in Australia, the USA, Europe and China. Kate has performed with Bobby McFerrin, Iarla O Lionaird, Gavin Friday and Karan Casey and plays regularly with Tarab, Yurodny and the Ergodos Musicians.
So Percussion Summer Institute
At the beginning of August I got back from the So Percussion Summer Institute (SoSI) at Princeton University. I’d applied to the course not really knowing what to expect. I’d never written for percussion before, been on a course in the States or worked with American musicians. There was a lot of unknowns. At the very least I’d certainly never expected to be performing blindfolded with Matmos in a Brooklyn bar…
The course was a mix of performance, lecturers practice and demonstrations and the theme of the course was percussion and electronics. The faculty and speakers were peppered with people who are straddling the electronic and acoustic worlds. Princeton composers such as Dan Trueman showed us examples of the electronics playing an active role in the musical performance. Each of his piano etudes causing the performer to work within the framework of the electronics and adapt to them in a different way. Read more
Release – In Your Own Time Part #3
This is the third in a series of post rounding out my experience of putting out In Your Own Time in April 2013. The previous posts covered the inspiration behind the project and putting it together as an app. This post will talk about putting the app out into the world and what that has meant for me.
Release & Press
The release date for the app was April 2nd and in advance of that I sent out some press releases to magazines and blog who I thought might be interested. There wasn’t an immediate take up on the idea. It had a summary write up in Noise in the first week. It also got a tweet from Harmless Noise. Largely though, initially at least, the response was a bit disappointing. Read more
Pre-release – In Your Own Time Part #2
This post follows on from a previous post about the inspiration behind In Your Own Time. In this post I talk about taking the prototype that I created for my thesis and recruiting people who could help turn that idea into a reality. Read more
Hans Abrahamsen workshop at New Music Dublin
Working with Hans Abrahamsen and the ConTempo String Quartet (via Seán Doherty)
It’s been almost two weeks since New Music Dublin ended and I’m just starting to recover. The festival was a collage of all things new music with concerts, installations and workshops happening over the course of the 4 days. As well as the main festival itself there was a conference on new music hosted by the Music Composition Centre in Trinity College. Needless to say it was a hectic weekend. I didn’t get to go to everything but I was luck enough to be selected as a participant on a string quartet workshop with featured composer Hans Abrahamsen. Read more
Screen Nights at #12 Rutland Place
Screen Nights is a series of film screening/concerts happening at 12 Rutland Place in January. The idea being to bring ideas from different musical scenes together for low cost nights out. As part of Screen Nights there will be three films shown which showcase different musical scenes: All Ears – a film about the L.A. beat scene, A Joyful Slog – a film about the independent music scene in Ireland, and PressPausePlay – a film about being an artist, whatever the discipline, in the digital age. As well as the film each night will have a related act performing, which will allow the audience to ask questions about what they’ve seen and listened to. Read more