CMC's new music::new Ireland Salon for May features Michael Holohan.

The Contemporary Music Centre’s forthcoming new music::new Ireland salon, 6pm, 25 May 2011 in the Kevin Barry Room of the National Concert Hall wraps up the Centre’s pre-Summer salon series. The series then resumes in Sep 2011.

The Centre’s May salon is an exciting development of the salon format and involves a music theatre piece based on the diaries and poetry of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Bill Manhire. Entitled “Where a single footprint lasts a thousand years’ it is a music theatre piece composed and devised by Irish composer Michael Holohan, and performed by Donal Kelly (actor/playwright), Simon O’Dwyer (musician), Beifne Holohan (musician) and Michael Holohan (musician).

The salon will involve a reworking and developing of the piece which to date has been performed to capacity audiences, earlier this year in the Rotunda Pillar Room, Parnell Square, Dublin and the Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda and at the Athy Community Arts Centre, Shackleton Autumn Summer School in  2010. The work was originally commissioned by the National Concert Hall to commemorate the centenary of a lecture given by Sir. Ernest Shackleton 14 Dec 1909 in the Aula Maxima of the National University, Earlsfort Terrace (now the National Concert Hall).

The texts in the work are adapted from the personal diaries of Shackleton and the poetic extracts are by the New Zealand poet Bill Manhire who once spent some time himself in the Antartic. The Composer attempts to evoke the eerie sound word of the Antartic mostly by means of acoustic instruments.

Admission is free for the new music::new Ireland salon but booking is strongly recommended. To book please contact the National Concert Hall on tel: 01 4170000 or email: info@nch.ie.

For further information on the performers and composer involved contact Karen Hennessy, Promotion Manager, The Contemporary Music Centre.