A meetup, workshop, show-and-tell for people interested in making, playing, experimenting with graphic and other alternative scores.
Bring along examples, things to try, questions, and instruments.
Part of the graphic score club
Oscillations & Modulations is a three–day festival of cutting edge live audio visual performance, DIY Eurorack / Synthesiser building workshops, audio visual talks and discussions, open Jam sessions, Gear demos, DJ sets and pop up events, which takes place on September, 29th, 30th and October 1st 2023, across various beautiful locations within the city of Derry.
The festival’s goal is to celebrate and explore an expanding ecosystem of electronic music culture, joining the dots between the music makers and teachers, synthesiser designers and performers, music studios and music spaces that help to shape and inspire the musical landscape of the city and beyond.
This years festival promises to carry the same principles and ethos forward, while cultivating new ideas, technologies and music.
Northern Lights Immersive Showcase Event
1pm - pablo sanz
(Solo immersive ambisonic concert)
4pm - Electric Circus
(New music for live performers and immersive sound)
7pm - Anna Murray & Brian Bridges
(Modular synths)
Part of the Sonic Vigil presents: In Your Own Time and Place 3-day festival of improvised music
Ireland’s unique experimental music group Quiet Music Ensemble performs music by Irish and international composers including Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Anna Murray, Irene Murphy and the world premiere of a new work by dancer Inma Pavon.
About ‘Aioi: leaves laden with words’
Aioi: leaves laden with words is based on the Japanese Noh play Takasago, the imagery of the pine and the space between worlds. The pine is a symbol of longevity and for liminality, for the rocking back and forth between the imagined and the real.
The score for Aioi: leaves laden with words is a set of 6 unique paintings, one for each performer - versions of the pine tree found at the back of the Noh stage. The performers improvise in response to their painting, to the story of Takasago, and the sound of wind in the pines.
Following this was Anna Murray’s Aioi: leaves laden with words (2022). The musicians improvised on the basis of a graphic score – a set of suiboku-ga ink wash paintings of Murray’s, each depicting the pine tree at the back of a traditional Noh stage – and were joined by Noh chanter Laura Sampson. The musicians were arrayed around the circumference of the stage like trees around a forest clearing, and created, along with some taped birdsong, an inviting bed of sound into which Sampson, kneeling in the centre, intoned, in Noh style, the encomium to the trees of Ireland in the tale of Buile Suibhne. The affect of the piece – particularly regarding Suibhne’s madness – was delicately ambiguous, and entirely compelling. The Journal of Music
Experience stunning classical music for flutes and voice from two outstanding performers. Lina Andonovska and Michelle O’Rourke perform the world première of a newly commissioned work for the duo, Brightening by celebrated Irish composer Linda Buckley with text by poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa.
Presented by Finding a Voice, Clonmel’s festival of music by female composers. This event also features the premiere of Analu by Maeve Kelly, winner of the 2022 Finding A Voice emerging composer competition, in association with Contemporary Music Centre, and Anna Murray’s ‘my little Force explodes’
About my little Force explodes
my little Force explodes is a ritual of letter-opening, conversation, breath, communication and message, based on the ‘envelope writings’ of Emily Dickinson. Written for Michelle O’Rourke and Lina Andonovska.
Quiet Music Ensemble brings three world premieres to Solstice Arts Centre in July, with music by renowned Sound Artist Kathy Hinde and Irish composers Francis Heery and Anna Murray.
Drawing respectively on the beautiful and subtle sonorities of especially created new instruments, the poetry of Yeats and on Japanese Noh theatre, the pieces were created especially for QME, responding to the ensemble’s unique, meditative, mesmeric music.
This event is part of the learning & engagement programme which accompanies the exhibition ‘I am sitting in a Room’. It is supported by Arts Council Ireland.
Programme:
Heery – Moon Phases 2022
Murray – Aioi: leaves laden with words
Hinde – Acts of Balancing and Unbalancing
About ‘Aioi: leaves laden with words’
Aioi: leaves laden with words is based on the Japanese Noh play Takasago, the imagery of the pine and the space between worlds. The pine is a symbol of longevity and for liminality, for the rocking back and forth between the imagined and the real.
The score for Aioi: leaves laden with words is a set of 6 unique paintings, one for each performer - versions of the pine tree found at the back of the Noh stage. The performers improvise in response to their painting, to the story of Takasago, and the sound of wind in the pines.
This remarkable recital opens with a short Duo for violin and flute by Irish composer Anna Murray. Bram van Sambeek then gives the Irish premiere of Weinberg’s solo bassoon Sonata. This is a full-scale, four movement work demanding extraordinary virtuosity from the performer. Ligeti’s Solo Viola Sonata is another legendary work played for us by Festival favourite Dana Zemtsov. Tongue in cheek Ligeti describes his influences as Bach’s three solo Sonatas and the Hungarian translation of Alice in Wonderland. We are not meant to understand, just to listen.
About Crosstalk
Crosstalk attempts to capture the feeling of trying to communicate across distance, both physical and experiential. As an Irish person living in Japan, my experience of the Covid19 pandemic is one of feeling split and pulled between two worlds: that of my own real lived experience of the reality in Japan, and that of my friends and family in Europe. While staying indoors during the State of Emergency, the online world became sometimes more real, and venturing out led to sensations of extreme cognitive dissonance. Communication between these two worlds was sometimes easy, oiled by the shared stresses and cares of the situation, and sometimes jagged, broken by the different on-the-ground experiences of it in different places. Imagine the now-ubiquitous problems of digital conferencing, with crosstalk, connection difficulties and misunderstanding, but applied to the process of communication itself. The piece takes the form of a kind of conversation, moving between these broken fragments and smooth easy chatting, punctuated by moments of an agonising pull between two places.
An honest, human and emotive response for now and the future.
Tonight Crash Ensemble play a selection of their [REACTIONS] commissions & postcard miniatures for the first time to a live audience, alongside sounds from across the globe… and… the first outing of a brand new piece ‘Standing Water’ by Kevin Terry, winner of the National Concert Hall Jerome Hynes Young Composers’ Award.
About the [REACTIONS] series:
“Amidst the onset of the global pandemic, we commissioned Irish & International composers from a range of musical backgrounds to write new works for duos within the group. Building on existing collaborative partnerships and cultivating and nurturing new relationships, composers were invited to create a musical response to their experiences, the current state and their thoughts for the future.”
About Crosstalk:
Crosstalk attempts to capture the feeling of trying to communicate across distance, both physical and experiential. As an Irish person living in Japan, my experience of the Covid19 pandemic is one of feeling split and pulled between two worlds: that of my own real lived experience of the reality in Japan, and that of my friends and family in Europe. While staying indoors during the State of Emergency, the online world became sometimes more real, and venturing out led to sensations of extreme cognitive dissonance. Communication between these two worlds was sometimes easy, oiled by the shared stresses and cares of the situation, and sometimes jagged, broken by the different on-the-ground experiences of it in different places. Imagine the now-ubiquitous problems of digital conferencing, with crosstalk, connection difficulties and misunderstanding, but applied to the process of communication itself. The piece takes the form of a kind of conversation, moving between these broken fragments and smooth easy chatting, punctuated by moments of an agonising pull between two places.
A new album of music for piano and electronics
Available for digital download via Bandcamp from 7 May, 2021
‘The moon sets and birds cry / 月は落ち、鳥が鳴いて’ is an album of pieces and improvisations for piano and electronics by composer/musician Anna Murray.
Created and recorded in 2020-2021, while Murray was studying traditional Japanese Noh theatre at Tokyo University of the Arts, the tracks of the album reflect aspects of that experience, and of Noh. Recorded in a rehearsal space during the Covid-19 pandemic and fluctuating emergency restrictions, the album also conjures a sense of closeness, of interiority and reflection.
Tracklist:
Mirror Board/鏡板 1 (live improvisation)
Azuma-asobi/東遊 (version 1)
In the sky, birds. On earth, trees
At Mii-Dera
Azuma-asobi/東遊 (version 2)
Mirror Board/鏡板 2 (live improvisation)
Water Iris/燕子 (with Michelle O’Rourke)
Written/performed/recorded by Anna Murray
Voice on Track 7 by Michelle O’Rourke
Recorded at Noah Sound Studio Akihabara
Mastered by Seán MacErlaine
Cover photo by Daryl Feehely
‘The moon sets and birds cry / 月は落ち、鳥が鳴いて’ is a quote from the Noh play Dōjō-ji, describing the moonlit scene at an expectant moment at a temple. The sounds and ideas of Noh are reflected in ways both direct and indirect throughout the album. Many of the tracks were recorded with microphones inside the lid of the closed piano, to pick up and amplify its mechanical properties - sympathetic resonances, the metallic hums of strings, wooden creaks of the piano frame reminiscent of the Noh stage and footstep-like knocks are woven into the texture. As with mugen (dreamlike) Noh, the worlds of reality and illusion are constantly shifted and blurred.
The album is bookended by two improvisations for piano and live processing, ‘Mirror Board 1&2’, named after the kagami-ita, the back panel of the Noh stage. The ‘mirror-board’ is always painted with the image of a pine tree, a ‘reflection’ of the Yōgō no Matsu pine from the Kasuga Taisha temple in Nara. Another pair of pieces, ‘Azuma-Asobi/東遊 (version 1&2)’ are based on the melodic structure of a section of one of the most famous Noh plays, Hagoromo, and were created using a hybrid noh/stave notation developed by the composer during her studies. One version uses a pitch-set close to that used in the Hosho school of Noh chant performance, the second uses the same structure with a new pitch-set, like two reflections in different colours.
At the centre of the album is another work, for piano and nohkan (flute) samples, whose title is borrowed from a Noh play; in this case, Yō Kihi, in reference to the old Chinese love story of Vega and Altair (shortened here to ‘In the sky, birds. On earth, trees’).
In the sky, we will be a pair of birds who always fly together in tandem.
On earth, we will be a pair of intertwined trees, our branches always touching.
It is followed by the first of two older works featured on the album, ‘At Mii-Dera’, (originally commissioned in 2017 by Kirkos Ensemble for Máire Carroll) which uses a graphic score based on the imagery of the moon, clouds and birds from the play Mii-dera.
The album ends with the second older work, ‘Water Iris’, with guest vocalist Michelle O’Rourke, which explores memory and longing through poetry from the play Kakitsubata, and poets Anna Akhmatova and Emily Dickinson, recorded remotely between Ireland and Japan.
The world premiere of ‘Metamold’ by the 2019 Barlow Prize Winner, Bekah Simms and the world premiere of ‘Images & Sensations’ by Irish producer and DJ Ellen King (ELLLL), a Crash Ensemble & New Music Dublin co-commission alongside [REACTIONS] - new music from David Fennessy and Anna Murray set to film by videographer Laura Sheeran.
REACTIONS] An honest, human and emotive response for now and the future.
Amidst the onset of the global pandemic, in 2020, Crash Ensemble commissioned 9 Irish composers - established, up and coming and from outside of the contemporary music sphere - to write unique new works for duos within the group.
Composers were asked to create a musical response - a political or personal response to their experiences, the current state, or their thoughts for the future.
Filmmaker Laura Sheeran was commissioned to make an accompanying film for each work, combining footage from the recording sessions alongside text and imagery.
[REACTIONS] Composers:
David Fennessy
Anna Murray
Performers:
Crash Ensemble
Videographer:
Laura Sheeran
Michelle O’Rourke – vocals, Lina Andonovska – flutes
Hildegard von Bingen - O ignee Spiritus
John Corigliano - Three Folk Songs
Liza Lim - Bioluminescence
Anna Murray - My little Force explodes
Garrett Sholdice - Two Whitman Fragments
PJ Harvey (arr. Colm O'Hara) - Silence
Kate Soper - Only The Words Themselves Mean What They Say
Curiosity, fearlessness and versatility carry Lina Andonovska’s artistry around the globe. Andonovska is a rare breed in the flute world; a name that you’ll discover on both the pages of Rolling Stone and the Australian Chamber Orchestra roster, she has not only cultivated partnerships with leading artists including Louis Andriessen, Donnacha Dennehy, Claire Chase and Bryce Dessner, but also deep community ties from Timor Leste to Tokyo’s Wonder Site. She has recently been appointed as flutist of 4-time Grammy Award-winning ensemble ‘eighth blackbird.’ She has collaborated with Ensemble Modern, Bang On A Can All-starts, Crash Ensemble, Deutsches Kammerorchester and stargaze. She is critically acclaimed for her interpretation of new music; Rolling Stone Magazine hailed her performance at Bang On A Can Summer Festival as “superbly played, (ranging) from sustained ‘somebody-please-get-that-tea-kettle’ squeaks to the flit and flutter of its beautifully lilting trills...” Recent credits include solo performances at New Music Dublin, Melbourne International Arts Festival that was noted as “re-defining the act of going solo “ (The Age) and at Musica Nova Helsinki. Lina released her debut solo album with Diatribe Records label in early 2020, which was described as “brimming with energy and bold textures, though marked throughout by nuance. A name to watch out for.” (All About Jazz).
Michelle O’Rourke is a singer based in Dublin, Ireland. Her natural sound, unaffected expressivity, and technical ability make for an interpreter of rare dynamism. Michelle combines her background in Baroque music with an adventurous eclecticism and an interest in interdisciplinary work.
Michelle is passionate about the commissioning and performance of new vocal music. She has worked closely with many composers, including: Ann Cleare, Andrew Hamilton, Simon O’Connor, Karen Power, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Garrett Sholdice. Notable releases include Andrew Hamilton: Music for People (NMC) and Left Behind: Songs of the 1916 Widows (Ergodos).
Michelle is ever fascinated by the seemingly endless expressive facility of the human voice; how singers have been centric to ritual performance for centuries, and how we continue as performers to evolve the interpretative and performative role of voice.
michelleorourke.ie
photo by Olesya Zdorovetska
The Peony Lantern | 牡丹燈籠" is a retelling of the story that spawned rakugo, bunraku, and kabuki plays. The story was popularized in the west in Lafcadio Hearn‘s 1899 book, In Ghostly Japan. Our version is set in the Taisho period, in Yokohama, in the three days leading up to the o-bon festival of the dead.
A traveler arrives at the port of Yokohama in 1912, alone and unprepared: unprepared both for life in a very different culture and for falling in love with a very singular woman. But something strange is going on, a secret hangs in the air like a lantern, and the boundaries between life and death are thin. Can the traveler discover what’s happening before it’s too late?
The show features the design talents of musician and composer Anna Murray, who previously did sound design music for our September 2020 livestream of "Wuthering Heights|嵐ヶ丘". We also have NYC-based costume designer Lindsey LaRissa Kuhn (The Outliers, Diana the Musical, Tootsie the Musical) and YTG newcomer and Broadway lighting and projection programmer Ted Charles Brown joined us to give the show a unique look.
When COVID-19 forced us to close our doors, we looked for new and creative ways to reach our patrons. Innovation, creativity, diversity, and adaptability are cornerstones of our theatre. We are committed to reaching an audience, even if it is not within the theatre itself.
What presented itself was an opportunity. To try something new, to do something different, to share our stage with a broader (global) stage. And to do it live. You heard us. Live.
Beginning September 19, 2020 we will be staging a virtual performance of Wuthering Heights | 嵐ヶ丘 over the course of 3 days. Emily Brontë couldn’t have dreamed what we have in store: we are devising not only the show, but also novel methods of presenting it, creating a hybrid experience of live theatre and livestreaming. In short: we are not just going to point a camera at a stage and call it a day. No matter what happens, we promise it will be more interesting than staring across the foggy moors for hours on end. We hope you will join us, from your living rooms, from your dens, from your kitchens, from your phones. We are opening the world of our theatre to you at home!
Please reserve your virtual seats for what promises to be an event that combines our take on a classic, some interesting feats of technology, and the thrill of a live performance at home. Please join us. Support the theatre. Support our talent. Support the arts in a time when many of us miss that connection the most.
With sound/music by Anna Murray.
Multiple performances online: visit https://ytg.jp/wuthering-heights/ for details.
Ireland
EMMA COULTHARD (flutes)
with
DAVID APPLETON (piano)
Flutes/Electronics/Voice
Featuring collaborative piece GlssRndr, premiered in June in Tokyo, plus music by John McLachlan, Fergus Johnston, Martin O’Leary and Benjamin Dwyer.
Every month we gather 3 smart speakers and a curious crowd. It's a new year, and 20+20=the 40th Nerd Nite in Tokyo! In January, let's discuss: Artificial intelligence tech eats up lots of energy, but can we make it more efficient? Fact or fiction -- is China taking over the Russian Far East? And we wrap up with an interactive performance/chat about electronic music and active listening, where *you* can be the composer.
Drinks (both alcoholic and non) and food from Tiny Peace Kitchen will be available. Eat, drink and be square-y! Kids are also welcome at Nerd Nite.
Speakers:
1. Syrielle Montariol -- Neural Networks: Deep Versus Green
2. Xiaochen Su -- Seeing Sino-Russian Relations at the Grassroots Level
3. Anna Murray -- "You Mean it's Just Sounds?": Randomness and Live Music
Price: ¥1000 at the door
Ireland
EMMA COULTHARD (flutes)
with
DAVID ADAMS (piano)
Flutes/Electronics/Voice
Featuring collaborative piece GlssRndr, premiered in June in Tokyo, plus music by John McLachlan, Frank Corcoran, Fergus Johnston, Grainne Mulvey, Paul Hayes and John Buckley
Ireland/Bulgaria
EMMA COULTHARD
Flutes/Electronics/Voice
Featuring collaborative piece GlssRndr, premiered in June in Tokyo, plus music by Grainne Mulvey, Fergus Johnston, John Buckley, Benjamin Dwyer, Paul Hayes, Raymond Deane, and Michail Goleminov.
An Irish Perspective
EMMA COULTHARD
Flutes/Electronics/Voice
Anna Murray – GlssRndr (Japanese premiere)
World Premiere: CHATTERBOX - Paul Hayes
SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2019 at 16:00
Doors open 15:30
TICKETS 2,000 Yen/Students 1,000 Yen
DUCHESNE ROOM,
THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF THE SACRED HEART
4-3-1 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150 0012
Featuring works by
John Buckley
Benjamin Dwyer
Paul Hayes*
Michael Holohan
Fergus Johnston
Jenn Kirby*
John McLachlan
Grainne Mulvey*
Anna Murray
*New Commissions
The South Tipperary Arts Centre will mark International Women’s Day with the Finding a Voice concert series – a celebration of women composers. The series will also mark the 200th anniversary of Clara Schumann, and will feature a series of specially commissioned works, ‘reflections’ on a theme by Schumann from the Scherzo of her Piano Trio in G Minor Op. 17, by Jane O’Leary, Rhona Clarke, Siobhan Cleary, Marian Ingoldsby, Amanda Feery and Anna Murray.
Still Reflection focusses in on a few tiny gestures of the Clara Schumann theme, expanding and re-combining them to create a slow, open 'still life’ of the original.
Morning Rituals brings together performances and new work by seven individual and clear-voiced artists from around the world: cellist Kate Ellis, Australian-Dutch composer Kate Moore, Egyptian musician Nadah El Shazly, Australian flautist Lina Andonovska, vocalist Michelle O’Rourke, composer Anna Murray, and musician-filmmaker Laura Sheeran.
my little Force explodes is a ritual of letter-opening, conversation, breath, communication and message, based on the ‘envelope writings’ of Emily Dickinson. Written for Michelle O’Rourke and Lina Andonovska.
Featuring words.
Kirkos will open 2019 by taking control of the RIAM’s premises on Westland Row to unleash Speaking of Music, a multimedia Happening overlapping an array of works by Irish and international artists at the bleeding edge of experimental music.
Co-curated by Andy Ingamells, the evening centres loosely on the theme of innovative use of text and speech. Presented in three parts across the evening, the audience can roam freely through a performance, installations, and finally a Happening with members of the Kirkos Ensemble.
Showcasing the truly chaotic, unpredictable, anarchic and sometimes silly character of experimental music, expect an evening of multisensory encounters full of surprise, laughter, lemon juice, a Mexican standoff, the destruction of a piano, the disembodiment of Beethoven, a dating app, and much much more.
