Streetsong, an electro-acoustic work by Ailís Ní Ríain commissioned by CMC, has won joint first prize in an international competition in Germany.

The competition, ‘Short Cuts: Beauty’ was run by ZKM/Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe as part of the 2006 ISCM World New Music Festival in Stuttgart this month.

Streetsong was one of three sound installations in the Contemporary Music Centre’s Old City/New Music project marking its 20th anniversary this year. The project was funded by Dublin City Council and Temple Bar Cultural Trust.

The ‘Short Cuts: Beauty’ competition sought multiple concepts of beauty from different cultures and was directed towards musically creative people throughout the world dealing with computer music. The ZKM looked for short pieces of 3 to 8 minutes in duration which represented the artists' concepts of beauty.

The citation of the jury described Ní Ríain’s Streetsong as ‘captivating with its icon-like sounds and musical form. Like a movie by Fellini the sounds evoke an aura of associations. The material, however, is declined in the course of the piece to be eventually concentrated in a contrapuntal way and to be juxtaposed in ever-new combinations. Simplicity and intensity are married in a congenial way. By this, the piece achieves the level required by “Short Cuts: Beauty”.’

During the festival the work was heard at special audio stations at the ZKM Karlsruhe and the festival's media center at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The Museum of Art in Stuttgart also provided a chillout lounge to present a selection of the most inventive works submitted and they were also broadcast on the WebRadio of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für elektroakustische Musik (German Society for Electro-Acoustic Music, DEGEM).

ISCM World New Music Festival (4-29 July 2006) is the official festival of the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (International Society for New Music, ISCM). It is held in one of the fifty member countries each year (last held in Germany in 1995) and reflects the newest developments in contemporary music.

Posted: 18 July 2006