“Music Current festival in Dublin has its finger more firmly on the pulse of what’s happening in Europe and internationally.”- Journal of Music
Music Current continues to punch above its weight as this small but perfectly formed annual music festival returns this April for another 5 days of pulsating new Irish and international music – with a defined focus on light and video [AI]:
Dublin Sound Lab’s Music Current festival returns this April with an outstanding dive into light, breath and video this year, as the annual five-day festival programme showcases some of the best Irish and international contemporary music makers. The festival will host 5 new concerts, Black Page Orchestra, TAK Ensemble, lovemusic collective and the return of Nadar Ensemble, as well as workshops on AI, electronic music and new composition, and more discussions that explore cutting edge new music and the future of music. The festival takes over its creative home space at Project Arts Centre, from April 2 – 6.
Music Current 2024 is the 8th edition of the festival and it continues to platform some of the most trailblazing music artists including composer João Pedro Oliveira (Portugal), TAK Ensemble (USA), Black Page Orchestra (Austria), Nadar Ensemble (Belgium) and lovemusic collective (France) – most performing in Ireland for the very first time. It’s an exciting mix and meeting of these creative minds in the current New Media and post-digital environment where composers are increasingly using new techniques and strategies to organise sound. And it all becomes very apparent at Music Current.
Festival Director, Fergal Dowling commenting on this year’s programme says: “Music Current Festival always aims to reveal the real excitement of experiencing live music. This year’s programme has a special focus on video, light (and darkness), and the human voice, with programmes exploring the relationship between music and visual image, and sound in darkness. Music creation is always central to the festival and this year we have three new works written especially for Dublin Sound Lab, three workshops focusing on music creation, and special composer events. As always, every piece in every programme is an Irish premiere. So this really is music that has to be experienced, not just heard.”
Evonne Ferguson, Director of the Contemporary Music Centre, commenting on this year’s Music Current festival says: “The Contemporary Music Centre is delighted to continue our ongoing partnership with MUSIC CURRENT festival in our support for the professional development events. The 2024 series of workshops and talks will provide opportunities for emerging and established artists active in New Music in Ireland to connect with international composers and performers – we look forward to facilitating these exciting exchanges here at 19 Fishamble St. We’re thrilled also to see this same spirit of collaboration and connection throughout the performance programme – with works by composers from Ireland featured alongside their international contemporaries.”
CONCERTS:
Tuesday 2 April sees TAK Ensemble (USA) open this year’s festival concerts while making their Music Current debut with an all-American programme. Hailed as “One of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music.” The ensemble was founded on the principles of curiosity, change, and caring communication. TAK is dedicated to the commissioning of new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists and they have premiered hundreds of works to date. TAK delivers energetic performances “that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The WIRE), and “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR).
Wednesday 3 April brings Dublin Sound Lab back with their own curated programme entitled FLOWERS BLOOMING BACKWARDS. In this new programme of “classic”, new and commissioned works, Dublin Sound Lab explores the relationship between musical material and visual representation. In “Glaze of Cathexis” John McLachlan responds to the raw visual composition of Stan Brakhage’s eponymous film. Daniel Mac Dermot’s “Bezier Lines” considers abstract shape as musical material, and is in turn transposed and answered by Mihai Cucu’s video response. Eryk Salvaggio’s “Flowers Blooming Backward into Noise” is a 20-minute animated “documanifesto” on the history, context, mechanics and limitations of AI art, “performed” here with a provocative musical response. João Pedro Oliveira’s new Music Current commission, “for M” integrates live music, electronic audio and video projection into a single visual-music artwork. Alexander Schubert’s visually stunning “Sensate Focus”, for ensemble and lighting, focuses the senses on the razor-sharp synchronisation between live sound and light.
Thursday 4 April welcomes Austrian new music group Black Page Orchestra who perform their Dream Work concert making their Irish debut. Described as “something like the punk band among Vienna’s new music ensembles”, they are renowned for their bold and fearless approach to music commissioning, programming and performance, and they are well-established on the continental festival circuit. Black Page Orchestra present three works by composers closely associated with the ensemble – Mirela Ivicevic (Croatia), Matthias Kranebitter (Austria), and Vladimir Gorlinski (Russia) – as well as three new commissions written specially for this event, including a new work by Peter Ablinger (Austria), perhaps one of the most recognisable and poetic voices in contemporary music, and two new Black Page Orchestra commissions by Irish composers Amanda Feery and Fergal Dowling.
Friday 5 April welcomes back Nadar Ensemble (Belgium) who return to Music Current after a superb response at last year’s festival with a programme centred on light (and darkness) in their concert entitled LIGHT MUSIC. Serge Verstockt switches off all visual stimuli to clear the path for primal instinctive listening. Through the lighting and blowing out of matches, a surprising and tactile sound sculpture emerges. Simon Steen-Andersen, with his arrangement of Schlummert ein from Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata ‘Ich habe genuch‘, literally extinguishes the light and movingly depicts Bach’s ‘lullaby of eternal sleep’. In “Light Music” by Thierry De Mey a soloist connected to Wi-Fi sensors seems to ‘paint’ light and sound, as if conjuring sound from the darkness. It has been said that “very little of what they do is ‘inside the box.”
Saturday 6 April makes for Irish debut of France’s music collective lovemusic – these musicians specialize in new music and offer a new approach to the idea of a concert, based on exchange, and are thought of being like “an urban breath of fresh air” by audiences. Their concert (L) AUTRE (the last in the 2024 Music Current concert programme) delves into this concept of otherness – the state of being different and foreign to one’s identity, labelling individuals as subordinate and excluding them from social norms. The starting point for this project was a collaboration with Sasha Blondeau and the new work Autres improprops/inapproprié•e•s as part of their “Devenir|s mutant es” cycle. Referencing Trinh Minh-ha’s theory and Donna Haraway’s Cyborg concept, the work for flute, clarinet, viola, cello, e-guitar, and electronics delves into questions of identity and difference. Additionally, compositions by Neil Luck, Ann Cleare, and Bára Gísladóttir explore themes ranging from actor David Patrick Kelly’s roles to meditations on self and the power of anonymity. Finbar Hosie’s The Hyacinth Garden draws inspiration from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, offering a political and sensual exploration through wastelands and gardens. The project will also includes a new installation work by Lara Gallagher exploring found sounds and materials including a structural/sculptural element developing interactions between traditional and digital instruments made from organic materials.
WORKSHOPS:
On Wednesday 3 April, multi award-winning Portuguese composer João Pedro Oliveira heads the Music Current workshop on Electronic Music. Participants will analyse different models of composition and interaction between instruments and electronics. The concept of musical gesture will be used as the link between the instruments and the electronic sounds. Examples will be taken from several works of the composer.
On Saturday 6 April, Irish sound artist and performer Lara Gallagher hosts a workshop on Composition. She discusses her new work for lovemusic collective and how technology has informed both her compositional decision-making process and her collaborative involvement with the ensemble. Gallagher working across a number of mediums including interactive installation art, live electronic performance and theatre. She strives to create work that opens a kind of communication and interaction between performing and listening bodies so that human connections and reactions can be explored.
Music Current workshops are supported by the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin (www.cmc.ie). Composer participants resident on the island of Ireland, travelling from outside Dublin, can apply for a travel and subsistence bursary by contacting festival staff when attending workshop events, or by contacting info@nullmusiccurrent.ie
Music Current has a reputation for presenting music that is cutting edge, fun and visionary, and this year the programme is entirely made up of Irish and world premieres, with a strong focus on A.I., visuals and live electronics and the experience of live music. The festival is a showcase of the “newest of the new” music from Ireland and worldwide.
A central feature of Music Current Festival is the creative collaboration of composers and performers with the presentation of new works, and Music Current regularly commissions new compositions and creates opportunities for collaborative development.
Dates for your diary at Music Current 2024:
WORKSHOPS:
Tuesday 2 April // 3pm–5pm // Workshop on AI with Eryk Salvaggio*
Wednesday 3 April // 3pm–5pm // Electronic Music with João Pedro Oliveira*
Saturday 6 April // 3pm–5pm // Composition with Lara Gallagher**
*All workshops will be free, booking is essential and participants are asked to contribute €5 at time of booking to cover refreshments. Workshop events are supported by the Contemporary Music Centre.
*Please note the venue for the Eryk Salvaggio and João Pedro Oliveira workshops will be held at the Contemporary Music Centre, 18 Fishamble Street @ 3pm-5pm
**The venue for the Lara Gallagher workshop is the Project Arts Centre, 39 Essex St East, Temple Bar @ 3pm-5pm
PANEL DISCUSSIONS / TALKS / ARTIST EVENTS:
Tuesday 3 April // 6pm–7pm // Future Music
Each year at Music Current Festival music audiences and the wider public are invited to engage in debates and discussions concerning how music making is affected by technology, social changes and the political environment.
In the current New Media and post-digital environment composers are increasingly using new techniques and strategies to organise sound. Here, three composers, academics, researchers and media artists share insights into their personal practices, working methods, compositional techniques, rationale, and the strategies they use to approach compositional problems, and how technology might inform future music developments.
2024 Panellists include: João Pedro Oliveira (PRT), composer / Amanda Feery (IRL), composer /
Lara Gallagher (IRL), composer.
Please note the venue for this event is the Project Arts Centre, 39 Essex St East, Temple Bar @ 6pm–7pm
Thursday 4 April // 3pm–5pm // Composer Talk with Peter Ablinger
Austrian composer Peter Ablinger is probably one of the most enduring, distinctive and poetic voices in contemporary music. His enormous body of work is a testimony to a lifelong sincere and direct engagement with sound in its purest form. In this talk Peter Ablinger discusses his highly personal artistic approach and in particular his new work for Black Page Ensemble who perform at this year’s festival.
These events are hosted in collaboration with the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland’s archive and resource centre for new music. It will be moderated by CMC Director, Ferguson, which will also be recorded for the ‘amplify’ podcast.
This public event is free to attend, all are welcome and booking is advised.
*Please note the venue for this event is the Contemporary Music Centre, 18 Fishamble Street @ 3–5pm
Thursday 4 April // 6pm–7pm // ARTIST EVENT – MEET NADAR ENSEMBLE
As part of Music Current 2024, the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland is delighted to host a mixer with the exciting New Music ensemble Nadar. This informal event is an excellent opportunity for early-career composers and sound artists to meet the ensemble and find out more about the Nadar’s international summer school held biennially in Antwerp, Belgium.
Join us at the Contemporary Music Centre Library for introductions and a friendly chat! Refreshments will be provided.
*Attendees may wish to head onwards to the BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA concert at 8pm, for more information and booking for this performance.
MUSIC CURRENT COMMISSION 2024
Music Current Festival invites composers to propose new works for Dublin Sound Lab to be performed in Dublin, April 2025. Submissions may be for any combination of flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello, MIDI keyboard, electric guitar, electronics, or video, without conductor.
The festival will review proposals according to flexible criteria, but we would especially like to receive proposals that engage critically with technology, media, or collaborative performance.
One applicant will be offered an award of €4,000. The commissioned composer will work closely with Dublin Sound Lab until April 2025, and may be invited to give public presentations on their work or to contribute to outreach, mentoring, or other professional development programmes in collaboration with our production partners.
Previous commissioned composers include: Anna Murray (Ire), Silvia Rosani (Italy), Patricia Martinez (Argentina), Seán O’Dálaigh (Ire), Panayiotis Kokoras (Greece), Brona Martin (Ire), Alessandro Massobrio (Italy/Germany), and João Pedro Oliveira (Portugal).
Applications close 11:59pm (GMT), Friday 29 March, 2024. The winning proposal will be announced in Friday 31 May, 2024 – http://www.musiccurrent.ie
CONCERT LISTING INFORMATION:
PROJECT ARTS CENTRE, East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
TAK Ensemble – MOUTHPIECE: Tuesday 2 April | 8pm [80 mins] | €16/14 | https://projectartscentre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873656219
Dublin Sound Lab – FLOWERS BLOOMING BACKWARD…: Wednesday 3 April | 8pm [75 mins] | €16/14 | https://projectartscentre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873656222
Black Page Orchestra – DREAM WORK: Thursday 4 April | 8pm [75 mins] | €16/14 | https://projectartscentre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873656224
Nadar Ensemble – LIGHT MUSIC: Friday 5 April | 8pm [60 mins] | €16/14 | https://projectartscentre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873656226
lovemusic collective – (L) AUTRE: Saturday 6 April | 8pm [75 mins] | €16/14
Box Office / Tel: +353 1 8819 613 / projectartscentre.ie
Further info at: http://www.musiccurrent.ie/2024/
ABOUT: Dublin Sound Lab
Dublin Sound Lab is a contemporary music project group specialising in electronic and computer-mediated concert performance. As well as presenting existing works, we initiate collaborations and use computer-based techniques to explore relationships between compositional process and performance practice, and to create new and engaging concert experiences. Formed in 2008 by composer Fergal Dowling and organist Michael Quinn, Dublin Sound Lab has worked with many leading Irish and international composers, performing works by: Ailis Ni Riain, Gérard Grisey, Salvatore Sciarrino, Kaija Saariaho, Luca Francesconi, Karlheinz Essl, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel, Wim de Ruiter, Ann Cleare, Scott McLaughlin, Barry Truax, Roderik de Man, Karen Tanaka, Jean-Claude Risset, Ed Bennett, Judith Ring, Gerald Barry, Jonathan Nangle, Jonathan Harvey, Rob Canning, Gráinne Mulvey, David Bremner, and Garth Knox, amongst others.
ABOUT: Contemporary Music Centre Ireland
The Contemporary Music Centre (CMC) is the archive and resource centre for Contemporary Music, supporting artists working in New Music throughout the island of Ireland. CMC connects New Music artists and audiences, facilitating opportunities for engagement, professional development and collaboration, both at home and internationally. As the archive for New Music from the island, CMC maps our vibrant musical landscape, safeguarding an ever-evolving collection for public access online and at the CMC Library on 19 Fishamble street. CMC is funded by the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
SOCIALS:
FACEBOOK: @DublinSoundLab
TWITTER: @DublinSoundLab
INSTAGRAM: @DublinSoundLab
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/DublinSoundLab
