Walled City Music Spring Series in Derry features new music by Irish composers

The Derry festival Walled City Music has announced details of its Spring Series, three days of new music events in April.

The three-day festival will open with 13 Vices, a collaborative project between composers Brian Irvine and Jennifer Walshe, co-produced by Moving on Music. 13 Vices is a work for voice (Walshe), strings (Red Note Ensemble and Paul Rogers), saxophone (Paul Dunmall) and percussion (Mark Sanders), and is inspired by a series of Moscow sculptures by Mihail Chemiakin: thirteen sculptures titled Children Are the Victims of Adult Vices. The work will be premiered in Belfast first on 8 April, and will tour to Drogheda, Dublin and London, after first visiting Derry’s The Great Hall at Ulster University Magee on 9 April.

Friday 10 April sees a performance by Hand Rain Soloist Ensemble, a Northern Ireland-based ensemble (recently appointed ensemble in Residence of Crescent Arts Centre Belfast) of composers and performers directed by Greg Caffrey. They will perform Schoenberg’s influential Pierrot Lunaire (1912) along with music by Bela Bartok and Ryan Molloy. This will be the first stop in a four-date tour that will also visit Crescent Arts Centre, Hugh Lane Gallery and Maynooth University, the ensemble’s last event of the season.

The final concert is the only one not to take place at Magee’s The Great Hall, instead taking place in the Cinema Bar at St. Columb’s Hall. Crash Ensemble present a concert titled Born in the 80s, celebrating and showcasing young Irish compositional talent. The programme includes Barry O’Halpin’s Lipids, Amanda Feery On Shuffle, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly Stars and Jonathan Nangle’s V1, with a new work titled Movement in Squares by Emma O’Halloran. This will be the second performance of the programme, following its premiere in Wexford on 2 April.

Tickets are available from the Millennium Forum Box Office, with individual concerts costing £10 (£6 conc.) and a 3 for 1 offer of £22.50 (£13.50 conc.), at www.milleniumforum.co.uk

Download a flyer for the series here.