Topographies brings together leading exponents of improvised and experimental music from Ireland and Germany for a weekend of adventurous New Music at PAS Berlin, one of the city’s best-known venues for contemporary music. Balancing improvised and composed works, the programme features three festival commissions by Berlin-based Irish artists Francis Heery, Ellen King and Elliot Murphy, each drawing on geographical and psychological landscapes. Complementing the live performance sessions is a free panel discussion, recorded for the New Music podcast amplify, featuring festival artists in conversation with CMC’s Jonathan Grimes.
DATES: Friday 24th and Saturday 25th May 2024
TICKETS: Friday, Saturday or two-day tickets available now at Eventbrite
FESTIVAL ARTISTS
Dan Bodwell: Double bass | John Godfrey: Electric guitar | Francis Heery: Electronics/composer | Brad Henkel: Trumpet | Jung-Jae Kim: Saxophone | Izumi Kimura: Piano | Ellen King: Electronics/composer | Malwina Kołodziejczyk: Saxophone | Vincent Laju: Cello | Shane Latimer: Electric guitar | Elo Masing: Violin | Elliot Murphy: Cello/composer | Ernst Surberg: Synth
FESTIVAL PROGRAMME
—- Friday 24th May—-
18:00 Topographies Festival Opening
All welcome to celebrate the beginning of the festival before the first performance at 8pm. Reception kindly supported by the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.
20:00 MoonPhases (2017/2022, Francis Heery)
MoonPhases is a long-form spectral work written as a homage to W.B. Yeats’ occult work A Vision. This book was derived from notes he took during daily seance-like sessions with his wife Georgie, who would channel messages from the beyond, either through speech or automatic writing. MoonPhases features a ‘hermetically charged’ drone and sets of performance instructions on 28 cards.
—- Saturday 25th May —-
13:00 Inferno (2021, Elliot Murphy)
Inferno is a work for solo cello and interactive pre-recorded strings written in celebration of the septuacentennial of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It follows Dante’s journey as he descends into the underworld marking each new location with a sonic landscape. Its modular composition allows the pre-recorded aleatoric parts to be flexibly recomposed during performance while the live cello part is improvised simultaneously. Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland.
15:00 ‘ … and if these were islands …’
A long form improvisation featuring various constellations and clusters of improvising musicians from Ireland and Berlin.
19:00 Uncharted
Panel discussion with artists and composers featured in Topographies, in conversation with the Contemporary Music Centre’s Jonathan Grimes. The conversation will be recorded for CMC Ireland’s dedicated New Music podcast, amplify.
20:00 Topographies Triptych
Three premieres written especially for the Topographies festival, for piano, electric guitar, cello and electronics by Francis Heery, Ellen King and Elliot Murphy.
Presented by the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland, in partnership with Artistic Director Francis Heery and PAS Berlin as part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany,.
