World premiere of SacrumProfanum for amplified musicians and tape by composer Benjamin Dwyer

20 February 2022 19:30

By Benjamin Dwyer (amplified ensemble and tape).

SacrumProfanum is a multimedia work for amplified musicians and tape that explores Sheela-na-gigs, the enigmatic stone carvings found in Ireland and parts of Britain.

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Irish composer Benjamin Dwyer has spent the last ten years travelling across the country studying, photographing and sketching these mysterious figures. Responding artistically through the Sheela ‘as witness’, Dwyer has created a unique work exploring themes such as feminism, colonialism, identity, religion, rite, landscape, sexuality and the disintegration of Gaelic culture.

In a score that combines contemporary music interfacing with traditional Irish forms, instruments and sean-nós singing, SacrumProfanum offers perceptive critiques of contemporary exploitations of Irish culture. It investigates these themes through raw, visceral, often abject but ultimately poignant and deeply affecting music.

SacrumProfanum features internationally renowned performers: violist Garth Knox, flautist Emma Coulthard, medieval Irish harpist and sean-nós singer Siobhán Armstrong, Benjamin Dwyer on bowed guitar, and uillean piper Donnacha Dwyer (featured on the tape part). Poet Jona Xhepa has written a specially commissioned poem entitled Sheela-na-gig, and the work incorporates a number of Gaelic texts sourced by Siobhán Armstrong.

For more on Benjamin Dwyer’s work on Sheela-na-gigs, read 'Sheela-na-gigs and an ‘ Aesthetics of Damage’ via the Enclave Review.