Ireland's foremost contemporary music ensemble Crash Ensemble will be front and centre at this week's New Music Dublin Festival at the National Concert Hall. Here, Crash Artistic Director and cellist Kate Ellis writes for Culture about their exciting plans for the event, and their unique brand of 'Music for the culturally curious - or just plain curious'.
Crash Ensemble play three concerts as part of the New Music Dublin festival at the National Concert Hall, taking place from March 2-4th.
As Ireland’s leading new music group, Crash Ensemble are constantly looking for opportunities to work with the most adventurous, engaging new music artists to create challenging, entertaining work which we can perform to the highest standards.
There is something for every inquisitive listener at these concerts - something to love, something to be puzzled by, but most importantly a unique exploration of new and unheard sounds.
On 2nd March for the opening night of the festival, we perform works by Gerald Barry and Thomas Adès, who will be joining us on stage, conducted by Timothy Redmond. This is the first time we have had the opportunity to work with Thomas, a British composer lauded as one of the most accomplished of his generation, and one of the most imposing figures in contemporary music.
Crash will, in an extended line up, perform Adès’ Living Toys - a piece for fourteen soloists inhabiting all sorts of magical sound worlds that are familiar but at the same time completely new.
Gerald Barry is our own home-grown genius. Like Peig Sayers to a previous generation, he will be known to leaving certificate students throughout the country. Barry is a is a long-time collaborator of Crash and a composer we return to regularly in concerts, opera and recordings. His music is humorous and playful, a force of nature that feels like dipping a toe into a passing whirlwind. For New Music Dublin, we will perform Octet and Lisbon with Thomas Adès as pianist.
We will also premiere a brand-new piece by Belfast-born Stephen Gardner - Jerk is an energetic flurry of notes, kindly written as a gift to Crash.
On Friday night, 3rd March we take over the festival club for an informal late-night gig with music by Meredith Monk, Qasim Naqvi and Christopher Mayo, conducted by David Brophy. American composer, performer and vocalist Meredith Monk’s first string quartet Stringsongs explores each instrument’s individual voice through a beautiful and unexpected melding of textures and sounds.
We will play the first two movements from Preamble by the young American Qasim Naqvi, drummer with Brooklyn based acoustic trio Dawn of Midi. Preamble combines traditional notation with graphic notation, leaving room for the element of spontaneity and chance and allowing (in Naqvi's words) 'each performer to interpret a singular idea with the possibility of different outcomes whilst the conductor is responsible for controlling the output of the ensemble’s collective choices’.
CRASH commission: @CJSMayo Christopher Mayo on writing for Crash -https://t.co/KQZnjetX2I pic.twitter.com/Yz5ENyhrmC
— CRASH ENSEMBLE (@crashensemble) February 22, 2017
Streets Become Liars is a commission by Crash from the Canadian composer Christopher Mayo which will receive its world premiere at the festival. The piece is about two men who had a brief but intense friendship: a photographer, and an American Trappist Monk. Mayo very cleverly mixes audio recordings of the conversations between the two men, Meatyard and Merton, with big angry chords in the ensemble and fragments of delicate folk-esque melodies.
On Saturday afternoon, 4th March, we will take the audience on a free musical trail through some of the lesser known spaces of the National Concert Hall - we're calling it Tiny Portraits in Tiny Rooms. Standing between overflowing storage boxes or in abandoned dusty offices, you will hear music by Ivan Fedele, Ondřej Adámek, Unsuk Chin and Kaija Saariaho.
Music for the culturally curious - or just plain curious.
Crash Ensemble at New Music Dublin 2017 - the programme:
Thursday 2nd March 2017 at 19.30 Crash Ensemble/Adès
National Concert Hall Dublin, Main Auditorium
Gerald Barry, Thomas Adès piano
Crash Ensemble
Timothy Redmond conductor
BARRY, Gerald: Five Chorales from The Intelligence Park [Barry/Adès Piano Duet]
ADÈS, Thomas: Mazurkas
BARRY, Gerald: Octet
BARRY, Gerald: Lisbon [Irish Premiere]
GARDNER, Stephen: Jerk [World Premiere]
ADÈS, Thomas: Living Toys [Irish Premiere]
Tickets: €35, €29.50, €23.50, €15 via NCH.ie
Friday 3rd March 2017 at 22.00
Crash Ensemble/Festival Club
The Studio, National Concert Hall
Tickets: Festival Club open to ticket holders for evening Main Auditorium events.
Saturday 4th March 2017 at 14.30 Crash Ensemble/Tiny Portraits in Tiny Rooms
Various rooms, National Concert Hall Dublin
Performances featuring music by composers Ivan Fedele, Ondřej Adámek, Unsuk Chin and Kaija Saariaho.
Tickets: Free and open to the public
