Finding A Voice 2022 presents "Reflections" featuring the new song cycle Watershed by Ailís Ní Ríain
Old St Mary’s Church
Yonit Kosovske (piano), Julie Comparini (contralto), Jessica Brown (poetry).
The final concert of Finding a Voice 2022 celebrates creativity on International Women's Day. With music by Lili Boulanger (1893–1919) and a newly commissioned song cycle by Ailís Ní Ríain (b.1974), singer Julie Comparini, pianist Yonit Kosovske, and poet Jessica Brown bring to life the words of poets in the beautiful song recital Reflections, where songs and poetry intermingle.
Like the hills of Clare and Tipperary mirrored in the waters of Lough Derg on a placid day, the emotions expressed in this music and poetry embody the theme of 'reflection'. Nature traces an outline that is echoed in the soul and the heart by poets Jessica Brown, Maurice Maeterlinck, Georges Delaquys, and Bertha Galeron de Calonne. These poems, rich in colour, though often elusive in their descriptions of reality, life, and death, are transformed by the music of Ní Riain and Boulanger.
What remains undeniable is the presence of the natural world as the stable centrepoint amidst human comings and goings. Mirroring these unpredictable human events are the shifting colours, light, and shades of nature that, in the realm of poetry, become a wellspring of emotion and a mirror of the soul—akin to the reflections of sky and mountain on calm waters.
Ailís Ní Ríain is an Irish composer and writer who aims to produce work that challenges, provokes and engages. Her work has been performed across Europe, in Israel, Brazil, USA and Japan and broadcast on BBC and RTÉ. Described as 'a significant talent' (The Irish Times), Ailís works broadly in the areas of concert music, music installation, opera and music-theatre, and has collaborated with writers, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, techologists and theatre artists.
For more information on the Finding A Voice Festival programme, visit findingavoice.ie
Programme
Ailís Ní Ríain - Watershed
Lili Boulanger - Quatre Chants
Jessica Brown - Poems
Tickets
Tickets available via Finding A Voice on Eventbrite, click HERE.