We at Béal are looking forward to this year’s festival, taking place over three days
in Dublin in November. We are entranced by the fascinating capacity of words to be both pure sound and a means of communication, and our mission is to explore this in the spoken and sung word. Our festival this year is all about finding alternative ways (no matter how rough and ready) of thinking and experiencing, building alternative combinations of words and music.

Our featured composers this year are Robert Ashley and Tom Johnson. We are delighted to include the European premiere of Ashley’s recent opera World War III Just the Highlights and a newly-commissioned by Johnson for vocal ensemble.

Both composers emerged from the time in American new music when the influences of minimalism and Cagean experimentalism met. Both have in their careers since then gone on to forge individual paths, and are pushing music into new terrain/expanding our aesthetic horizons.

More details will be available soon…..

7th-9th November 2012, Smock Alley Banquet Hall

Tickets: 10 euro / 8 euro (conc) – day tickets, 25 euro festival pass

events from 7 pm on Weds and Thursday with main act at 8.30 pm.  On Friday, a marathon session from 4 pm with the main act at 8 pm.