New Irish music at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Thu 7 Nov 2013
The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf) takes place from 15–24 November. As the UK’s largest and longest running festival of new and experimental music, this year’s International festival includes some 50 events, including concerts, music-theatre, dance, multi-media, talks and film.
A number of Irish composers and performers feature in this year's festival:
- The launch event on 15 November features an exhibition from Irish experimental art collective Grúpat. The exhibition, which was originally curated by Irish composer Jennifer Walshe in 2009, showcases Grúpat’s different approaches to sound, ranging from graphic scores to installations, silent films and sonic reliquaries, sculptures. The exhibition runs until 23 November at the Huddersfield Art Gallery.
- A new work for viola and ensemble by David Fennessy is premiered by Garth Knox and Scottish ensemble Rednote on 16 November in St Paul's Hall.
- Award-winning Irish composer Jennifer Walshe will perform her own work in an evening of experimental composition and film on 18 November at Bates Mill Photographic Studio.
- The UK premiere of Seán Clancy's work for Quatuor Bozzini, Neue Kraft Fühlend, composed as part of the group's Composer's Kitchen project, takes place at the Town Hall on 21 November at 11am.
- Scott McLaughlin's new work for six electric guitars, Surfaces of Emergence, is premiered by the Metastable Collective at the Creative Arts Building Atrium at 3pm on 23 November.
- Also at Bates Mill Photographic Studio on 24 November, the Cork-based experimental music group, the Quiet Music Ensemble, visit the hcmf for the first time with a programme featuring the world premiere of a new work by Jennifer Walshe. The work, DORDÁN, was written for the ensemble with funds from the Arts Council and is inspired by the composer’s research into the work of iconoclastic Irish traditional musician Pádraig Mac Giolla Mhuire, in particular his 1952 ‘dordán’ (roughly translated ‘drone’) recordings.
Further information on the festival is available from the hcmf web site.
View a short clip from the Quiet Music Ensemble rehearsing Jennifer Walshe's DORDÁN. Video produced by Maarten Roos, lightcurvefilms.com