string quartet
Announcing my debut album!! Smacht!
I am delighted to announce that I’m releasing my debut album!
Smacht is the fruit of two years of work and the culmination of lots of hard work and many serendipitous opportunities working with lots of wonderful, talented and generous people. The release is the result of lots of tinkering and experimenting and thinking. Of throwing different ideas at what I think a release could and should be. And figuring out what it was that I loved about the music I’ve bought. The music was recorded by Kate Ellis, Robin Panter, Adrian Hart, Cora Lunny and Mobius Percussion along with a remix by producer Sean Byrne. It will be out on the 2 April with Ergodos and there are launch events in Amsterdam, Dublin and New York.
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
Ones to watch in 2014
In the glorious year of 2013 I was luck enough to meet lots of interesting people. While I don’t want to anyone to feel left out I do want to single out two of the music makers I met who I think are doing interesting things and who I look forward to seeing more from in 2014 i.e. these are my ones to watch in 2014. I’ve picked two young composers/performers who I met throughout 2013 and whose music I really gelled with. Make no bones about it this is a very subjective choice on my part – I really like the music, but I also think that both of these music makers are very productive and proactive. They’re much more competent and accomplished than I was at a similar stage and I’m interested to see where their talents will take them. Check them out below and give their music some of your time. Read more
West Cork Chamber Music Festival String Quartet Workshop
I’m just home from the convolutedly titled West Cork Chamber Music Festival String Quartet Workshop, a workshop of string quartets in progress with 5 other composers. Our venue for the day was the jaw droppingly beautiful Cork School of Music, full of cavernous hallways and generously proportioned rooms and most importantly very reasonably tasting coffee. We were also luck enough to have the company of the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet to play through our pieces, with the composer Deirdre Gribbin leading the workshop.
The workshop opened with Vanbrugh playing through examples from Beethoven, Britten and Janáček with Deirdre point out important features of the music and talking us through how these ideas could be applied when writing for the quartet. Pulling out phrases from different pieces and having them played using different string techniques, such as sul pont, as harmonics or pizzicato, showed the variety of sounds that can be achieved and how these sounds can be combined to create interesting textures. Read more
Irish Composition Summer School
It’s been 2 weeks since I finished a week of composing and recording as part of the Irish Composition Summer School. In the mean time I’ve had some time to take stock of the course and wanted to give a summary of my experience. The goal of the course is to compose a piece of music during the duration and have it played and recorded by a professional musicians in the final two days. This gives you 8 days to write a piece of music that will be played by professionals, a pretty scary task. Before starting the course I’d done some composition for college assignments and a bit of song writing but nothing too major, this was to be my my first major leap into the world of composition.