Wood Quay Summer Sessions: CMC presents New Dublin Voices

13 July 2017 13:00

Dublin City Council Civic Offices

 

The Wood Quay Summer Sessions are a series of free lunchtime concerts which will take place in Dublin City Council Civic Offices Amphitheatre each Thursday in July.

 
The aim of the sessions is to promote and support home grown musical talent. This year's event will feature performers from across a wide range of musical genres including Jazz, Contemporary, Trad, Folk and more. The series is curated by First Music Contact, Improvised Music Company, The Contemporary Music Centre and Music Network on behalf of DCC.
 
CMC are delighted to be involved again in this year's Wood Quay Summer Sessions, which will feature a performance of contemporary choral works by New Dublin Voices on Thursday 13th of July.
 
International award-winning New Dublin Voices is a leading Irish chamber choir. Founded by conductor Bernie Sherlock in 2005, the choir takes special pleasure in exploring the music of living composers, leading the way in performing, premiering, commissioning and disseminating Irish choral music and introducing international choral music to Irish audiences. NDV has won prizes at major competitions in France, Hungary, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Spain, England and Italy, including first prize at the Concorso Polifonico in Arezzo, Italy in August 2013, the Grand Prix at the 12th Budapest International Choir Competition 2009, all six prizes at the 2011 International Choir Contest of Maasmechelen, Belgium, the Fleischmann International Trophy at the 2015 Cork International Choral Festival, and 2nd prize at the 2016 Harald Andersén Chamber Choir Competition in Helsinki. NDV is very happy to have been selected as one of 24 choirs world-wide (and the first Irish choir) to perform at the 11th World Choral Symposium, to be held in Barcelona this July.
 
Seán Doherty, whose new work Snow Dance for the Dead, receives a preview performance in advance of its world premiere in Barcelona, writes about the piece:

I am thrilled that New Dublin Voices, directed by Bernie Sherlock, will give the premiere of my new work, Snow Dance for the Dead. The piece is challenging, both vocally and dramatically, and the choir have worked tirelessly to perfect it before its high-profile world premiere at the 11th World Symposium of Choral Music in Barcelona next week. CMC played an important role in the development of this piece; earlier this year, a draft of Snow Dance for the Dead was the subject of a public workshop, as part of CMC’s ‘Choral Sketches’ project, in partnership with Chamber Choir Ireland, directed by Paul Hiller, and mentored by the composer Tarik O’Regan.

Snow Dance for the Dead marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, which, as well as triggering four years of horrific civil war, saw the birth of ‘the Cheka’, the soviet state-security organisation and the forerunners of the KGB. The Cheka used a callous, mocking euphemism for the act of killing: ‘NatsoKal‘. It was onomatopoeia, an expression that imitated the sounds of the trigger being cocked and the gun being fired. I have combined this sound with a fragment of the poem ‘Snow Dance for the Dead’, written in 1927 by the Dublin-born radical poet Lola Ridge, in which she urges little children to ‘Dance…to the rhythm of the snow’.

Programme

Down by the Salley Gardens                                                                                                arr. Mark Armstrong
Dreaming                                                                                                                            Mark Armstrong
This Endris Night                                                                                                                 Seán Doherty
Psalmus (preview performance)                                                                                           Peter van Dijk
Veni Sancte Spiritus                                                                                                             Georg Grün
Dum Medium Silentium                                                                                                       Vytautas Miskinis
Nyon Nyon                                                                                                                           Jake Runestad
Dúlamán                                                                                                                              arr. David Mooney 
Snow Dance for the Dead (preview performance in the presence of the composer)               Seán Doherty
The Bluebird                                                                                                                        Charles Stanford
A Nywe Werk                                                                                                                        Seán Doherty   

Admission is free so grab your lunch, bring your friends and join us at The Wood Quay Summer Sessions this July! 

 
Venue

Dublin City Council Civic Offices

Wood Quay
Dublin 8

Venue Contact Info