Ailís Ní Ríain is an Irish composer and writer who aims to produce work that challenges, provokes and engages. Her work has been performed across the globe and broadcast on BBC and RTÉ, with commissions for the likes of the London Sinfonietta, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the RTÉ ConTempo Quartet. Below, she introduces her new album, The Last Time I Died.
The Last Time I Died is a 'portrait album' of my music which has been released by NMC Recordings and includes work spanning the past twenty years of my output.
The focus is primarily on small scale, classical chamber work as up to relatively recently most of my concert output was for these forces; the theatre, intimacy and nuance of the small-scale performance has always appealed.
NMC Recordings - arguably one of the foremost contemporary classical music labels in the world - first approached me back in 2018 when I was working in the USA on Wired, an aerial wheelchair dance-theatre production with Kinetic Light for The Shed in New York and MCA, Chicago. The NMC label has been a formative one for me; as a student, their Sampler releases opened me up to myriad worlds of intensely satisfying new musical languages.
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Listen to The Last Time I Died, via Spotify
Initially we set about selecting repertoire, carefully curating a journey for the listener. A pandemic and several lockdowns later, here we are, finally, The Last Time I Died has been released. Featuring performances by some outstanding musical interpreters including Irish violinist Darragh Morgan, world renowned deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie, Psappha and the New York Ensemble Exponential Ensemble.
I was born in Cork and studied music at University College Cork before moving to England to take a masters and further post-graduate study in composition at York University and then the Royal Northern College of Music. From the outset, my work has involved aspects of theatre, movement, text and visuals and film.
I am deaf/hard of hearing and rely heavily on what I see to help navigate what I 'hear’ - this has become a touchstone of much of my work.
This album was recorded throughout the pandemic in bits and pieces, the last session took place in June 2022 in Cambridge where we recorded the largest and newest work on the album - Revelling/Reckoning - a sextet for wind and percussion featuring the world renowned deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and the New London Chamber Ensemble.
The piece is a reflection on opposite but connected forces that make up all aspects and phenomena of life. Revelling is dense, vivacious and playful with puckish percussive commentaries with a breathless energy. Reckoning is a slow, murky and mysterious series of utterances submerged within the eerie water-phone.
"…the finish line is a shifty thing
And what is life but reckoning."
Ani DiFranco
Thank You is a short work for guitar and cimbalom taken from a long-form music-theatre work, Brief-Blue-Electric-Bloom (2009/10) in which I wrote the text and music.
The work features video animation, two sign-language performers, live music and text. My aim is to enable a deaf audience and ‘disable ’a hearing audience so that we might ‘receive ’the work equally.
"…And when I am rich with loss like now
You carefully steer me
away from thoughts
of dangerous release."
Ailís Ní Ríain
It explores the theme of relationship and communication breakdown and misunderstanding between people either perceived, notional or 'real'. We present a delicate, challenging world where sign begins and music completes every sentence, where we strive, through difference, to communicate our desires, dreams and deviants.
It’s been a real pleasure to send the album out into the world.
The Last Time I Died is released by NMC Recordings - find out more here.
