Fergal Dowling is a co-founder of Dublin Sound Lab and the Artistic Director of the annual Music Current Festival, which returns to Project Arts Centre, Dublin from April 12th – 15th, with a four-day programme showcasing some of the most fearless innovators in contemporary music - find out more here.
Below, Fergal introduces this year's Music Current programme.
If I tell you that Music Current Festival is all about live music performance, you'd probably say, well all music festivals are about live performance. But Music Current is a little more than that. Music Current showcases contemporary music, music that has to be experienced and not just heard, music that is not so easy to simply capture on recordings, but which has to be witnessed.
This year especially the programme is full of works that impose themselves on the scale of a theatre, or that envelop the listener in sound, or works that use game-based forms that unfold in unexpected ways, or works that combine with video and must inhabit real spaces to be witnessed and understood. Like much contemporary music practice, this is music in the "expanded field" – music that reaches out of the page, past the purely sonorous realm and into the visual and spatial domains.
The festival grew out of an earlier, still on-going project, Dublin Sound Lab, which I started with a college friend, the harpsichordist Michael Quinn. We began collaborating to write and perform our own works and some international repertoire that we thought was overlooked in Ireland, like Mauricio Kagel, Peter Ablinger, Karlheinz Essl, Gérard Grisey, Salvatore Sciarrino, Jean-Claude Risset, Jonathan Harvey, and others.
The idea of composer/performer collaboration, and of bringing new underexposed European music to Dublin, grew into something bigger than our project group and it seemed natural to invite more guests, especially international performers to Dublin. Now Music Current regularly attracts international soloists and ensembles.
This year we have Nadar Ensemble (Belgium), Schallfeld Ensemble (Austria), Natacha Diels (USA), Michael Maierhof (Germany), and this year’s commissioned composer Alessandro Massobrio (Italy). Many other international composers are represented, like Johannes Kreidler (Germany), Martin Matalon (Argentina/France), Marko Ciciliani (Croatia/Germany), Davide Gagliardi, and Christof Ressi.
The festival always has a strong multimedia element, and this year video plays a central role in every programme (there is even a workshop on Composing with Video). The Irish visual artist Jaki Irvine is preparing a new work for ensemble and VJ; we have the Irish premiere of Simon Steen-Andersen’s eye-twisting Study for String Instrument #3 (for cello, tape and video); Natacha Diels’ one-person show, which is a richly coloured visual treat; a close-up chamber opera based on the 1970s Charles Bronson movie Cold Sweat; and two technically brilliant multimedia concert spectacles by Schallfeld Ensemble and Nadar Ensemble.
Music Current is also a site for music creation, and a central part of our programme is an annual commission scheme. This year we are proud to present newly commissioned works by Italian composer Alessandro Massobrio and Irish composer Francis Heery, which will be performed by Izumi Kimura and Shane Latimer – Izumi and Shane are performers well-known to jazz audiences.
Visitors to the festival can expect a presentation of the best of Irish and international of new music: small distilled solo pieces, detailed and impeccably crafted new commissions, and startling ensemble works of great technical ambition.
They can expect to see important and challenging (in a good way) works, like Jessie Marino’s Rot Blau, Michael Beil’s Key Jack, and Stefan Prins’ deeply unsettling and provocative political commentary, Generation Kill.
appreciate the importance of experiencing music.'
It's important that festivals also leave room for the audience and other musicians to become involved, to take part in music making and music creation, and to have a chance talk about music, where it’s going, new musical trends and technologies, and music’s role in society.
Parallel to the public facing concerts, Music Current has always had a professional development stream. But now we have a panel discussion and a series of workshops, which are more accessible and approachable for the general pubic. Anyone with an interest in music, whether they’re a casual concert-goer, performing musician, synthesiser enthusiast, laptop musician or professional composer, can attend any of these workshop events and really take part, see how other people are making music, and share their ideas on all these topics, in a friendly and welcoming environment.
Now, more than ever, I think people genuinely appreciate the importance of experiencing music. It is not just about coming together to witness the ritual of music performance; composers and ensembles are now creating music performances that have great physical depth and extent in real performance spaces. That’s what we try to share in Music Current – music that can be challenging in many ways, not least in challenging the listener – or spectator – to find new meaningful resonant experiences that will remain with you.
Music Current Festival returns to Project Arts Centre, Dublin, from April 12 – 14, 2023 – find out more here.
