Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble: Gallery Music Day 1

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble present Gallery Music Day 1:

Largely inspired by the visual arts, this programme highlights music which encourages us to consider and imagine various visual elements. William Scott, whose works hang in the Ulster Museum, is the focus for our Featured Composer Greg Caffrey and we also premiere a recent work by Amelia Clarkson, an upcoming local composer formerly supported by our PRSf scheme. There is an American connection between Perry Goldstein, whose piece Twittering Machine was inspired by Paul Klee’s painting, Jane O’Leary, with her atmospheric vision of Gwen O’Dowd’s abstract sea paintings and John Luther Adams The Light Within. He describes the inspiration behind the piece “On a crisp autumn day sitting inside Meeting - Turrell’s skyspace at PS1 in Queens, New York - I experienced my own epiphany of light. From mid-afternoon through sunset into night, I was transfixed by the magical interplay of light and colour, above and within. Over the hours the sky descended through every nameless shade of blue, to heaviest black. The light within the space rose from softest white, through ineffable yellow to deepest orange. Just after sunset there came a moment when outside and inside met in perfect equipoise. The midnight blue of the sky and the burnished peach of the room came together, fusing into one vibrant yet intangible plane...light becoming colour, becoming substance." The spacious and thoughtful atmosphere of this work carries through to the end of the concert with a work by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, whose “musical material is constructed with a focus on subtle nuances and poetic textures...”. Her score is imbued with beauty and fragility and performance directions such as “Soloistic with calm & ease and subtle sense of brokenness” complete our transcendence into ambient artistry.

Programme

Greg Caffrey - 3 movements on the work of William Scott (2017), flute (alto fl.), clarinet (bass cl.), violin, violoncello, piano, vibraphone

Amelia Clarkson - The wind cries over the state of her house (2022), flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano, percussion

Perry Goldstein - Twittering Machine (1998), flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano, percussion

Jane O’Leary - Beneath the Dark Blue Waves (2019), flute, bass clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano

John Luther Adams - The Light Within (2007), alto flute, bass clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano, vibraphone (crotales) & electronics

Anna Thorvaldsdottir - In the Light of Air – Serenity (2014), viola, violoncello, piano, harp, percussion & electronics

Tickets

£10/5 (Free for QUB students & staff). Booking will be available via Eventbrite, see Hard Rain's website here for link.