2016: Inapropriate Moments

A 2 day presentation of the ground-breaking music of Jennifer Walshe by the radical text and music partnership, Béal at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre. The works will be performed by ensembÉal, a group of the finest choral singers in Ireland, directed by Elizabeth Hilliard. The composer will also bring her compelling live performance to the festival. Eight ensemble works will be presented, including several Irish premieres and a world premiere.

Walshe has redefined what vocal-ensemble music can be. She has gained an international reputation as a radical musical thinker, but one not stuck in an ivory tower. Her work displays a fascination with the parallels between the discipline of classical music and that of other human activity patterns. A broad range of topics, not usually considered fitting to the classical music world (eg. games, sign language, pop references, telepathic messaging) are incorporated wholesale into her work.

In these densely-worked studies of marginalia, the super-extreme and the banal mingle

uneasily; Walshe takes all the tension and awkwardness that classical musicians train

for years to expunge from their practice, and puts it right back in. Rhythms of nervous

distraction form a silent counterpoint to the audible. The scores proceed with methodical

deliberateness; material of all types is neutrally juxtaposed in blocks.

Alongside the theatrical madness there is an intangible core of poise and even-handed balance. The experience of the festival will be unified by Walshe’s incendiary solo performances. Another constant running through the programme is Karaoke, perhaps as a comment on our culture of uneasy imitation.

There can be an almost unbearable sense of overwhelming menace and foreboding,

bringing to mind J.G.Ballard’s comment about ‘a planetary suburbia, a future of utter

boredom, lit by totally unpredictable acts of violence’. Co-existing with this, there is a

curiously meditative and calming tinge to these works, a puzzled apprehension of the

strangeness of the world we find ourselves in.

Friday 8th July 2016

FREE POP-UP PERFORMANCES

Venue: Public areas of the Project Arts Centre

3:30pm

A Folk Song Collection

3:50pm

The Soft Menagerie

4:10pm

Julian & Kanye

4:30pm

World Premiere performance of a new work

4:50pm

PADDY REILLY RUNS WITH THE DEVIL

CONCERT

Venue: Space Upstairs at the Project Arts Centre

8:00pm

he wants his cowboys to sound like how he thinks cowboys should sound

Zusammen ii

WATCHED OVER LOVINGLY BY SILENT MACHINES

Saturday 9th July 2016