Musicians Adrian Crowley and Matthew Nolan introduce their long-gestating project Pomes Penyeach, inspired by the poetry of James Joyce, which tours to a trio of European capitals this May and June.
Sometime in late 2019, we – Matthew and Adrian - met to tentatively discuss a new project based on Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce; a beautiful collection of thirteen poems first published in 1927 by Shakespeare and Company in Paris. The idea was to take these thirteen poems and somehow reimagine them as songs. And so it was that by the end of our conversation, the seeds were sown for a beautiful project. Its journey into being would prove to be an elongated and circuitous one; we could never have foreseen how this process would unfold.
Regrettably, its journey into the world was not going to be an easy one.
So where does one begin with such a task - the task of setting Joyce's poems to song? Well, maybe the first thing to do is not to look at it as a task at all, but an opportunity to express oneself. We got together in a rehearsal room in Dublin city, both bringing ideas to the table. We agreed that the text almost felt happy to be offered the vehicle of airborne sound. The nascent melodies trembled with each syllable. The words already sparkle and crackle with an inherent vitality on the page, and we found a way to let the songs sparkle and crackle in kind. We discovered all kinds of light in the text. The imagery gleamed and glinted;
sometimes darkly, sometimes it flared with a kind of phosphorescence. We marvelled at the modernity of the text and the arcane beauty it also possessed. We were exhilarated by the crescendos that we created, inspired by the words. We were moved by the simple tenderness the text revealed.
It was a thrill to experience the freedom we felt in composing this music and a joy to perform these new songs. Because that's what they are, new songs. When the time came to bring these new songs to the rest of the band, we were honoured to be invited by Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) to use one of
their magnificent high-ceilinged Georgian rooms as a rehearsal space - fittingly in the very building where Joyce himself went to school.
We had planned on presenting the fruits of our labour at the National Concert Hall in March 2020 by invitation of St Patrick's Festival but then, of course, something happened in the world and those plans were put aside. And so it was that almost a full year later, on the weekend of February 21st 2021, we rolled back the carpet in the Old Physics Theatre at MoLI. We set up microphones and took our instruments from their cases. The sunlight streamed in through the high windows across the wooden floor. We formed a socially distanced circle, smiled at each other, and made a record. This wonderful experience was captured by the supremely talented filmmaker Bob Gallagher, whose film was broadcast by the St Patrick's Festival last year - watch it here.
After a challenging two years we can finally present our music to a live audience. Given the year it is for all things Joycean, we are delighted to be finally able to take the project to mainland Europe for a series of concerts, supported by the Dept of Foreign Affairs. We are so excited about sharing this work and it is rather fitting that our first show is in the city where Pomes Penyeach was published almost a century ago.
Pomes Penyeach, featuring Adrian Crowley, Anna Mieke, Matthew Nolan, Sean Mac Erlaine and Kevin Murphy play the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris on May 31st, Bozar in Brussels on June 1st and Zenner in Berlin on June 2nd.
