Note Productions in association with The Ticket and Irish Museum of Modern Art presents

Anáil Dé – The Breath Of God
GAVIN BRYARS & IARLA Ó’LIONÁIRD  
with The Crash Ensemble

Friday 14th November, Great Hall, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin

Saturday 15th November, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan.

Note Productions is pleased to presented the premiere performance of Anáil Dé - The Breath Of God is a major new work by iconoclastic composer Gavin Bryars for arguably the finest Irish singer of his generation, Iarla Ó’Lionáird.

Anáil Dé - The Breath Of God is based on pre-1600 texts from Ancient Irish spiritual manuscripts selected by the artists. The premiere concerts will be performed by Gavin Bryars, Iarla Ó’Lionáird and The Crash Ensemble. This new project is a unique and special meeting of traditional Irish music and modern European composition. Gavin Bryars is best known for his iconoclastic works such as Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet and The Sinking of the Titanic. Iarla Ó’Lionáirds acclaimed work fuses the traditions of sean-nós with modern electronic music and soundscapes.

Anáil Dé is a new commission funded by the The Arts Council of Ireland and RTE lyric fm and produced by Note Productions.

http://www.gavinbryars.com/
http://www.myspace.com/iarlamusic
http://www.crashensemble.com/


TICKETING INFORMATION
Friday 14th November, IMMA / Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin
Tickets 25 Euro (including booking fee).
Bookings: www.ticketmaster.ie and www.tickets.ie, 0818 719 300 (Ticketmaster), and Claddagh Records.
Ticketmaster telephone and internet bookings subject to a maximum 12.5% service charge, agents 2 Euro.
Doors: 8.00pm; show starts 8.30pm.

Saturday 15th November, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan
Tickets: 25 / 20 Euro (concession)
Bookings: 046 909 2300 or from www.solsticeartscentre.com
Credit Card bookings fee 1 Euro. Online booking fee 1.75 Euro
Show 8.00pm
 

FREE STATE IV
In keeping with Crash Ensemble's wish to promote young Irish compositional talent, we are continuing with our FREE STATE concert series of new Irish works.

We would like to issue a call for new works from young Irish composers. The age limit is to be 35. Composers must be Irish or of Irish residency.

Crash Ensemble consists of the following instrumentation:
Violin
Viola
Cello
Double Bass (can double as Electric Bass)
Electric Guitar
Percussion
Piano (can double as synth)
Flute (alto and piccolo also)
Clarinet (also doubles as bass clarinet)
Trombone

We welcome works for any or all combinations of this configuration and electronics are also an option. If you have a video aspect to the piece this will also be acceptable.

Please send PDF's of scores and/or download links to mockups to the contact email on the contact page. You can also post scores/CD's/DVD's to the contact address. Please do not email large files.

The deadline is Wednesday 1st October 5pm.

FREE STATE IV will be held on November 27th as part of a 2 concert series, the second being WORLD VIEW 1: UK, a focus on new music from the UK.

Crash are literally just back from the madness of the Bang on a Can Marathon last weekend and are looking forward to next weeks concert. The Marathon was an amazing experience where we got to catch up with friends from all around the world. Check out the below links to see some people's reactions to the event... and we certainly did not sleep much!!

 

"Crash Ensemble, from Ireland, played colorful works by Donnacha Dennehy, its founder, and Terry Riley"
New York Times 

"Iarla Ó Lionáird's sweet voice riding atop the ensemble's furiously cascading arpeggios made for an ecstatic release"
Secret Society Blog 

"other highlights: Donnacha Dennehy's Grá agus Bás by the Crash Ensemble from Ireland"
Monotonous Forest Blog 

And don't forget that tickets are now on sale for Crash Originals (€20/€18) on Tuesday 10th June at 8pm in Vicar St, Dublin. Tickets available from Ticketmaster

Talking to David Lang at the Marathon, he has promised a really exciting piece for the concert, and as the composer himself will be over in Dublin for the event it promises to be a really special night!

We look forward to seeing you there... 

Tickets are now on sale for the upcoming gig in Vicar St on the 10th of June.

 

 

Tickets are available through ticketmaster.ie or through any ticket master agents throughout the country.

To all of you in Australia looking to buy CD's of Crash Ensemble, you can now connect to links of online record companies via our links page.

Record Labels / CD Releases is the 4th section down in the links page. You can connect HERE. 

Crash Ensemble will be performing this Friday 16th May in the Conservatorium of Sydney University.

The venue is Recital Hall West at 7.30pm.

Ticket prices are €20/€10 - tickets are limited and will be sold at the door.

For further venue information please contact convenues@usyd.edu.au

We look forward to seeing you there! 

You can now view images from our concerts over the last few weeks. Images from our Music of Phill Niblock concert on the 23rd of April, and also images from working with Risa Jaroslow for the Dublin Dance Festivals presentation of Resist/Surrender.

Crash are in preparation mode for traveling to Australia this week! If you are that side of the world we have concerts on the 12th and 14th in Street Theatre, Canberra, and a concert on the 16th in the Sydney Conservatorium. All concerts promise to be excellent! (including two world premieres of new works by Australian composers Michael Smetanin and Kat McGuffie, commissioned by Crash Ensemble with the aid of the Australian Arts Board). You can get more details on the Canberra festival at www.cicmf.org 

Beyond that we are also preparing for the Bang on a Can marathon, which promises to be great fun! You can see more details on their website (check our links page) but you cannot say no to 12hours of non stop contemporary music in the heart of New York City!

Finally, for those of you based in Ireland :-) our upcoming concert will be in Vicar St on the 10th of June. It will feature a new work written for Crash by pulitzer prize winning composer, David Lang! NOT TO BE MISSED!! 

The Niblock concert was a great success! It was lovely to see the audience really engaging with the space and the music... walking into corners to see how the sound changed... and that moment in G2-44 when, only on the stairwell between floors 2 and 3, it sounded like there were helicopters in the building!!

 

Dancing is going great too. Tonight is the first show of Resist/Surrender, with the Risa Jaroslow dancers in O'Reilly Theatre. There are not many tickets left for tonight, but you can still get tickets for tomorrow night. www.ctb.ie

You can also get a sneak preview of what the show is about at the Dance on the Box webpage. Just look under the festival video diary.

We look forward to seeing you there! 

Its been a busy month for Crash Ensemble, what with featuring on TG4's Gradam Ceol awards and recording the new soundtrack, by Donnacha Dennehy, for the new feature length thriller by Gerard Stembridge, Alarm! (release due in the autumn!)

And now we can announce that tickets are on sale for the upcoming Niblock gig in Temple Bar Galleries. Tickets are €18/€20 and are available from Central Ticket Bureau (0818 205 205, www.ctb.ie) Tickets are limited, due to space, to 100 only, so please get your tickets in advance to avoid disappointment.

We look forward to seeing you there! 

Iarla Ó'Lionáird is to be given an award at this year's Gradam Ceol Awards and he will be performing live with Crash Ensemble at the event.

The show will be broadcast on TG4 on Monday 24th March at 9.30pm. 

Below is the press release:

Gradam Ceoil is coming from the INEC in Killarney this year for the first time, where traditional, classical and contemporary musicians will join together onstage to celebrate with the award winners.

This year’s awards go to Iarla Ó Lionáird, the unique and gifted sean nós singer who has sung with the Afro-Celt Sound System, the Chieftains and Dónal Lunny; Peadar Ó Riada, the talented and at-times avant-garde composer an man behind Cór Chúil Aodha; Martin Tourish, a young piano accordion player from Donegal whose debut album Clan Ranald was greeted with critical acclaim; Joe and Siobhán O’Donovan, a couple from Cork City who have devoted themselves over decades to travelling the globe teaching traditional step-dancing and Harry Bradshaw, renowned broadcaster, producer of RTÉ Radios One’s The Long Note and diligent re-masterer of some of the finest and most treasured recording of Irish traditional music since recording came to Ireland. This year’s Musician of the Year award goes to the masterful Martin Hayes (pictured below) whose haunting, sympathetic playing has always shown deep respect and understanding for the airs of Irish music.

Our winners will be joined by some of the most influential musical acts in the country. Liam O’Flynn, Paddy Glackin, Cór Chúil Aodha, Altan and other special guests will ansure that this year’s Gradam Ceoil will be a night to remember.
 

The venue for the Niblock gig on the 23rd of April has been confirmed as Temple Bar Gallery, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. The concert will be held in the atrium of the Gallery, and hence numbers will be limited.

Phill Niblock himself will be in attendance, as will Trio Scordatura and famed Niblock interpreter, Susan Stenger. 

We will keep you up to date as to when tickets will go on sale so that you do not miss out!

The Crash Ensemble event in the RTE Living Music Festival on the 17th of February has completely sold out well in advance of the event. Whilst this is great news for the ensemble, we are sorry that we cannot accommodate everyone.

The only thing to do is contact Central Ticket Bureau and put your name down on a cancellation list. (0818 205 205) 

It promises to be a really great gig. See you there! 

Crash Ensemble will be performing as part of the RTE Living Music Festival this February.

The concert will be at 5pm on the 17th of February in the Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD and will include works by Jacob Ter Veldhuis, Martijn Padding, Peter Adriaansz and Arvo Part (featured composer).

Further details are in our concert pages. Tickets are nearly sold out!

Tickets available from Central Ticket Bureau at 0818 205 205 or online at www.ctb.ie 

Happy New Year from Crash Ensemble!! And to celebrate we have finally managed to upload over 100 PHOTOS of our Shindig in October of 07. A great selection of photos that show the breadth of works performed, the range of amazing talent and the wonderful reception from our brilliant audience!

We hope you enjoy and remember fond memories!

Also, tickets are now on sale for our RTE Living Music Festival concert on the 17th of February in the Samuel Beckett Theatre. We will be performing such works by Part as Spiegel im Spiegel and Stabat Mater alongside works by Dutch composers Padding, Adriaanz and Ter Veldhuis. The concert promises to sell out sooner rather than later so buy your tickets now!!!

www.ctb.ie

 

Crash Ensemble and Iarla Ó Lionáird to perform world premier of new Dennehy Sean Nós settings as part of 10th Anniversary national tour
 
Friday November 16th | Sionna Festival, Limerick
Thursday November 22nd | UCC, Cork
Friday November 23rd | Baile Mhuirne, West Cork
 
After a triumphant debut in New York, Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s foremost contemporary classical ensemble, will perform the world premiere of a new set of Sean Nós settings for Iarla Ó Lionáird.
 
Written by Crash Ensemble’s Artistic Director and Composer Donnacha Dennehy, this national tour is to mark the 10th Anniversary celebrations of a company renowned for its compositions and interpretations of cutting-edge music.
 
The programme includes the 2nd Irish performance of the highly acclaimed Grá agus Bás, written by Dennehy for Ó Lionáird as well as a new setting of the Sean Nós song, Aisling Gheal.  Also featuring will be a new piece by grandfather of minimalism, Terry Riley, written for Crash Ensemble and LCMS - Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle – which evokes scenes of ancient celtic Ireland and is heavily inspired by old Irish art.
 
The concerts will also feature work by Ziporyn. Alan Pierson, of New York-based ensemble Alarm Will Sound, will be conducting and performing in the concerts.
 
FULL PROGRAMME
Crash Ensemble – Strange Folk
Aisling Gheal (Dennehy)
Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle (Riley)
Kebyar Maya (Ziporyn)
Grá agus Bás (Dennehy)

Below is information on some of the pieces played at our SHINDIG listening space. The 'winners' of the competition were Fergus Kelly and Ian McDonnell.

Fergus Kelly is an Irish visual and sound artist/improvisor based in Dublin. His has been in numerous shows nationally and internationally, and has received many Arts Council awards. As an improvisor, he plays an invented instrument called The Cabinet of Curiosities. In 2005/6 he established a CDR label and website, roomtemperature.org, as an outlet for his solo and collaborative work, producing the CDs UNMOOR (2005), MATERIAL EVIDENCE (2006), BEVEL (2006) (with David Lacey), A HOST OF PARTICULARS (2007) and STRANGE WEATHER (2007)

The piece Overheard Overhead is from the Room Temperature CDR Strange Weather (2007). It explores a variety of urban and suburban landscapes using the natural sound colour and dynamic of the locations as compositional elements. These interact in a way that seeks to encourage new forms of listening and a more active, engaged relationship with the soundscape.

My work is concerned with exploring new soundworlds, and the place of sound in a visually overloaded culture. I'm fascinated by audio-visual relationships in various contexts - film, architecture, weather, memory, and how these senses are always linked: we never see deaf or hear blind. But since the introduction of sound film, then TV, the two senses got unnaturally separated - picture first, then sound.
I'm very interested in the fact that sound is perceived from numerous points in space as an immersive, unified field, whereas vision is only perceived from specific points of focus. Unlike our eyes, we can't  close our ears. Fergus Kelly, October 2007


Karen Power is a composer based between Cork and Limerick. She works as a Music Technician in Mary Immaculate College and is also a part-time PhD student at SARC, Queen’s University Belfast. Karen is interested in writing for a wide variety of focuses that include the use of; acoustic instruments, electro acoustic sounds, electronics and computer enhanced sounds. To date she has explored a number of musical styles in her compositions and has had her works performed by a number of talented musicians – for which she is grateful! She has just been awarded an experimentation award at the Belltable Theatre in Limerick providing the opportunity for a new work to be exhibited throughout Nov. 2008.

are you sure you’re hearing what’s written is a tape piece completed in 2007. The piece explores a variety of sonic worlds that move through each other very smoothly and with a sense of purpose. This piece started out as the tape part for a Bass Clarinet piece. I soon realised that I was a lot more interested in what the tape was developing into so I turned all attentions to developing this solo tape piece. I hope you get something out of the result.


Benoit Granier is a French Composer who currently lives between Beijing and Singapore. in 2007 he completed a PhD degree in Computer Music and Composition at Trinity College Dublin, where he also lectured for some time. After working in diverse institutions such as the Beijing Central Conservatory and Beijing contemporary Music Academy, he Moved to the Harrow school were he is currently teaching Computer Music, and Composition.

Over the past ten years, Dr Granier has also been active as a composer/ visual artist. He has written for a large diversity of medium that ranges from composition for solo instruments (he is currently writing the last piece of a suite of twelve pieces for solo instruments) to composition for large orchestra. He has also extensively worked for Mixed Media and pure electronics, and recently developed an interest for the creation of composition for mixed ensemble regrouping classical formation and traditional forces.

Dr Granier’s composition has been played in Ireland, France, UK, China, Japan, Singapore and America. He has also been invited into numerous conferences such as the Open Fader in Belfast or the Computer Music Festival in Florida, and has been an active published scholar in the field of composition, Music analysis and Music cognition.

[1] “Vespers 1.0: From Chaos to order” (8.40 minutes) for solo tape diffused in stereo


“Timbre is that attribute of auditory sensation whereby a listener can judge two similarly presented sounds that are dissimilar using any criteria other than pitch, loudness or duration”.

The birth of “Vespers 1.0: From Chaos to order” came from another tape work called “Outcast” which focused on the notion of the physical expansion of the universe. During “Outcast”, I started to become interested by the notion of subtractive synthesis theories, and I started to work on the filtering of noise. This led me to rethink the notion of spectralism where we could filter complex sound and then add them together once again in order to recreate complex tones. In this piece, which is resolutely quite, even intimate at some times, one can hear sounds like a clarinet or bassoon which are created only by the addition of sounds that have been processed using four types of noise (brown, filtered, ink and white). This composition is rooted on a personal reflection about color tone creation and organization as a formalized tool for composition.  



Montec Laude is interested in algorithmic sound synthesis on all time scales. He views his music as a by-product of the process of learning about pattern generators. Individual pieces are snapshots of experimental results where the aim is to create sounds which have the character and subtle variation of real acoustic ones. www.montec-laude.net



Garrett Sholdice
In the past five years, Garrett has had his music performed by, amongst others, the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, the Concorde Ensemble, Trio Arbós, violinist Elizabeth Cooney, American pianist Matthew McCright, the Royal Irish Academy of Music Percussion Ensemble, and members of both the Crash Ensemble and the New York Miniaturist Ensemble. His music has been performed in New York, Dublin, York, at the Galway Arts Festival, the Sligo New Music Festival, the Printing House Festival of New Music and at the Spitalfields Festival in London.

He has been awarded the National Chamber Choir's annual Gerard Victory Commission (2002) and the National Concert Hall's Composer's Choice Commission (2005). In September 2007 he was commissioned by Irish chamber choir New Dublin Voices, with funds from the Irish Arts Council.

As an undergraduate in Trinity College, Dublin, Garrett studied composition with Donnacha Dennehy. A Professional Development and Training Award from the Irish Arts Council and a Rosalyn Lyons Masters Scholarship supported his MA in composition at the University of York during the academic year 2006/2007. He is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at the University of York with Prof. Nicola LeFanu.

Garrett is a co-director of the Printing House Festival of New Music (www.printinghousefestival.org). His website can be found at www.garrettsholdice.com.   


DURATIONS (2007) for ‘tape’. Music for the choreography of the same name by Northern School of Contemporary Dance (Leeds, U.K.) student, Liv O’Donoghue, composed during February/March 2007. Durations (Liv O’Donoghue’s major choreography project) was twice performed by students of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (U.K.) in the Riley Theatre, NCSD in March 2007. A musique concréte study. Pacing and structure was shaped by the choreography.


Ian Mc Donnell (b. 1979) - composer

Ian Mc Donnell is a Dublin based musician and composer. He recently completed a Masters in Music and Media Technology at Trinity College Dublin, where he studied composition with Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle and Fergus Johnston. He has been making electronic music for many years as one half of duo Lakker (with Dara Smith), described in the JMI as “one of the best electronic acts in Ireland”, and more recently with new projects Lomelindi (alongside vocalist Laura Kilty) and Jenny-and-the-Deadites (with Jennifer Brannagan). He is a member of the Young Composer's Collective, and also the Spatial Music Collective, a group of Irish composers specialising in surround sound and multi-channel music.

In the past he has written works for both electronic and acoustic forces, including ‘Mi Koso Yasukere’ for 6 voices, piano, string quartet and tape, which was premiered in the O’ Reilly June 2006. More recently he performed his electronic work ‘New Music for Wind and Metal’ at the ‘Free State’ concert with the Crash Ensemble in November 2006, performed in a piano and laptop duo with composer Roger Doyle at the Project Arts Centre in February 2007, and played a set of live improvised electronics at the CMC as part of Dublin’s Culture Night, September 2007.

Currently he is working on new music for performance in early 2008, and is getting ready to embark on a tour promoting “Ruido”, the debut album for electronic act Lakker, which has just been released on Lazybird records.

04-10-2007

Contact Details:
Phone: 087 775 8768
Email: eomac1@gmail.com
Web:    www.myspace.com/ianmcdonnellmusic
    www.virb.com/ianmcdonnell

Coil
Coil is an electronic work based mainly on the sounds of violin strings and the inside strings of a piano being manipulated and processed in various ways.  These create a multi-layered texture over which angular rhythmical patterns, melodic fragments, voices and harsh noise are heard. It is a rhythmical piece, but in a minimalistic way, drawing its influences equally from modern electronic musicians such as Autechre and more avant-garde sound-worlds.



Title:   Heterosexual Extrovert
Year of composition: 2007
Composer: Brian Ledwidge Flynn (1977 – )
Dur: 2'52''

Description
Quarter tone study using 6 electronically manipulated pianos



Artists: The Greater Periscope Orchestra (The GPO)
Track: Lost (Extract)
Album: Lost Stereo
Year: 2007

A soundscape piece featuring interviews with Nasa and University of Berkeley California scientists at the Space Sciences Lab on the campus. The focus is on the emotions tied into satellites that have been lost, or accidentally broken. The work was part of a residency there at the Space Sciences Lab, and part a desire to bring random performance to the stars. This work was preformed at the Luggage Gallery in San Francisco.

 

The following review was in Tuesday's Irish Times:

Between the concert on Friday night and the "marathon" of five concerts from noon to 10.30pm on Saturday, the Crash Ensemble's 10th anniversary programme included 39 pieces by 28 composers, of whom only two are now dead, and they within the last 10 years.

Attending the entire marathon was tiring but uplifting. The venue, the converted church of Saints Michael and John in Temple Bar, has the best acoustics of any I have heard the Crash use in Dublin, and the way that the 30 works were grouped almost always felt right. Not one of the performances was below par.

Many of the works had been commissioned by the Crash or were written with them in mind; and others were by influential composers or by those otherwise associated with the ensemble. Works that made a strong impact on this pair of ears included Brian Bolger's transcription of Kevin Volans's White Man Sleeps, which achieves that rare feat of making you think there was no transcription at all.

There was the craft and expressive subtlety of Raymond Deane's Ventalia, impeccably played by William Dowdall (flute) and David Adams (piano). James Tenny's Glissade was as startling as when I first heard it last year.

But for sheer compositional pizazz, it was hard to beat Terry Riley's Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle. Written for the Crash Ensemble and premiered at the Drogheda Arts Festival earlier this year, this three- movement work sees the legendary Californian letting his hair down. Packed with direct aural references, and executed with cheeky enjoyment and technical flair, it suggests primitivism, exoticism, battle sounds, and what seemed like ambulance sirens at the end. What else do you need after a battle?

Saturday's concerts included several pieces by Donnacha Dennehy. Among his recently composed works, one of the most impressive was Stainless Staining, a virtuoso essay for piano and soundtrack that explores, with riveting effect, a harmonic spectrum of 100 overtones built on low G sharp. It was played by the pianist for whom it was written, Lisa Moore, who is also the pianist with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the New York-based group that has deeply influenced the Crash, and likewise runs marathon sequences of concerts.

In this piece, and in Frederik Rzewski's Piano Piece No 4, Moore provided two of the star performances of the day - brimming with virtuosity and with the enjoyment of creativity. Another solo highlight was Andrew Zolinski's muscular yet shapely playing of two iconoclastic pieces by Nancarrow, Prelude and Blues and Tango?

However, for enjoyable astonishment, nothing quite beat the singer-cellist Laura Moody. She plays lyrically; then as if it was a box for sound effects. She sings her own almost-pop songs, gurgles, hoots, wails, taps her throat with the bow. Yet it's all seamless, as if she, the cello and the music are a single organism.

The final concert included two recent pieces that Dennehy has written for the celebrated Sean Nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird. His setting of Aisling Gheal creates a beautifully scored and harmonically coloured backdrop to the song; and Grá agus Bás is nothing less than a transmutation of traditional style, with Ó Lionáird's beautiful singing woven into sounds imbued with harmonic overtones.

No wonder this piece made such an impact when it was played in the USA earlier this year. It is deeply expressive, and shows that this ensemble can caress just as effectively as it can crash.  - Martin Adams

We are making it easier to check out the exact program for SHINDIG here.

FInd concert program on FREE STATE (12th Oct) here

Find concert program on Marathon (13th Oct) at 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 7pm, 9pm

Tickets are available through the Central Ticket Bureau, on www.ctb.ie and at +353 1  8721122.

Individual concert ticket prices are €20. The entire Marathon day is €40 (5 concerts!!! what a bargain!!!). You will also be able to buy tickets at the door for each concert (that is, of course, if they do not sell out!). Concessions for students. All concerts have intervals.

There will be signage around Temple Bar, Dame St and Essex Quay to guide people to the venue. There is no parking at the venue. The nearest Luas stop is Jervis. There is work going on around the venue (cobble stoning) but do not let that deter you!

We are promising an excellent show! Looking forward to seeing you there! 

A new Sean Nós setting by Donnacha Dennehy, sung by Iarla Ó Lionáird; the Irish premiere of a Dennehy piano piece performed by Lisa Moore (Bang on A Can); new works by Gerald Barry and Julie Feeney as well as performances by Andrew Zolinsky and the Dublin Guitar Quartet along with 30 other pieces of music are among the many highlights of Crash Ensemble’s 10th Anniversary celebrations.  

Crash Ensemble’s SHINDIG, running at SSMJ in Temple Bar on October 12th and 13th, is a mammoth weekend featuring two concerts; Free State – a look at some of the most interesting contemporary music in Ireland today including the premiere of a new Crash Ensemble commission by Gerald Barry, and Marathon – a whopping 11 hours of new music by the godfathers (and extended family) of contemporary classical music.

Please visit our press page for the full press release.

Location of SHINDIG venue:-

 

Friday August 31st 2007 | Holy Trinity Church, Westport
As part of the Westport Arts Festival (31st August – 9th September 2007)

After a triumphant debut in New York, Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s foremost contemporary classical ensemble, will perform the world premiere of a new set of Sean Nós settings for Iarla Ó Lionáird at the Wesport Arts Festival.
 
Written by Crash Ensemble’s Artistic Director and Composer Donnacha Dennehy, this concert is the beginning of a national tour and the 10th Anniversary celebrations of a company renowned for its compositions and interpretations of cutting-edge music.

The programme  for the Westport Arts Festival concert includes the 2nd Irish performance of the highly acclaimed Grá agus Bás, written by Dennehy for Ó Lionáird as well as two new settings of Sean Nós songs.  Also featuring will be a new piece by grandfather of minimalism, Terry Riley, written for Crash Ensemble and LCMS - Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle – which evokes scenes of ancient celtic Ireland and is heavily inspired by old Irish art.

The concert will also feature work by Ziporyn. Alan Pierson, of New York-based ensemble Alarm Will Sound, will be conducting and performing in the concert.

Crash Ensemble feature on a new CD released by NMC this week. Donnacha Dennehy's 'Elastic Harmonic' features Crash performances of Junk Box Fraud  and Streetwalker.

Already the reviews are rolling in from as far afield as the Scotsman and Paul Griffiths' blog 'Words and Music':

"The performances are fresh, furious and frenetic. Central to Junk Box Fraud, with its virile intrusions of jazz and rock, and to his catchy Streetwalker, are the idiosyncratic Crash Ensemble. They display an "ownership" of these works somewhat reminiscent of The Fires of London and Peter Maxwell Davies. According to Dennehy, Crash was intrinsic to their conception." - Scotsman

 

Crash Ensemble will be performing with Terry Riley as part of the Spirals of Ragtime and Raga Festival, May 4-6 in Drogheda.

Crash will be performing Riley's seminal minimalist piece, In C, and a new piece, written especially for Crash and LCMS, called Loops for Ancient-Giant-Nude-Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle. Terry Riley and his son Gyan will be performing with the Ensemble on the night.

Details of the concert are in our concerts section.

Tickets €20 available online from www.ticketmaster.ie and Ticketmaster outlets.
Alternatively contact the box office at Drogheda Arts Office 041 9876100. 

WNYC’S John Schaefer’s much respected and widely listened radio show NEW SOUNDS will feature CRASH ENSEMBLE’S recent concert in New York.

The concert, which featured Sean Nos singer Iarla O Lionaird, received a rave review in The New York Times (see below).

Tune in on 93.9 FM at 11PM NYC time this evening (11 apr) or via the web on http://www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds/ (also available as a podcast the following day, follow the link: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds/episodes/2007/04)

WHAT THE NEW YORK TIMES SAID ABOUT CRASH ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE LAST WEEK


“a magnificently energetic, wildly cacophonous vocal work”
 
 “the Irish new-music band that plays with the energy and spirit of a rock group”
 
 “Iarla O Lionaird sang the Gaelic text with simplicity and directness in a plaintive folk style, and the ensemble — amplified strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and electric guitar, with Alan Pierson conducting — gave it a powerful account”
 

Crash Ensemble have just returned from an extremely successful concert in New York City. Their NYC debut was very well received and today the New York Times' Allan Kozinn let everyone else know what they missed!

The program was recorded for New Sounds Live on WNYC, 93.3 FM, and will be broadcast on April 10 and 11. As it will be slightly difficult to listen to it live here in Ireland, WNYC will be archiving the recording after the broadcast and we will post the link so you can check it out yourselves! 

From today’s  New York Times:

“a magnificently energetic, wildly cacophonous vocal work”

“the Irish new-music band that plays with the energy and spirit of a rock group”

“Iarla O Lionaird sang the Gaelic text with simplicity and directness in a plaintive folk style, and the ensemble — amplified strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and electric guitar, with Alan Pierson conducting — gave it a powerful account”

 
link
 

In advance of next weeks New York debut, you can now catch a glimpse of Donnacha Dennehy's new piece, Grá agus Bás, as it was performed by Iarla Ó Lionáird and Crash Ensemble on the 10th of February this year (2007).

The video only shows sections of the performance and the audio is only from the camera mic, however we are to complete a full version very soon.

AND you can always come and see it next Wednesday!! 

We would like to thank the CMC for their help in this video production.

You can see the video on YouTube at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGY7WCXx1W0 

In advance of their New York debut, Crash Ensemble will be performing a concert of Crash favourites in Dartington Arts, Devon. The concert will be held next Wednesday 14th March in the Great Hall. See details here

On the 28th of March Crash Ensemble will have their first ever concert in New York. Invited by John Schaefer, of WNCY Radio, to perform in the final concert of the New Sounds Live 06/07 series, Crash Ensemble will be performing in a double headline concert with the fabulous Trio Mediaeval.

The Crash Ensemble performance will include the world premiere of Dennehy's Stainless Staining, performed by guest pianist and commissioner, Lisa Moore (of Bang on a Can All-Stars). The final piece will be the American premiere of Grá agus Bás (love and death). Written for Iarla Ó Lionáird and Crash Ensemble, the piece premiered in Dublin this February to a sell out audience and has created quite a buzz since then. The unique marrying of traditional Irish sean nós and contemporary classical is a new direction for Dennehy and an exciting one for Crash Ensemble. We are looking forward to introducing the American audience to this new brand of contemporary music.

Please see the link on Merkin Hall to book tickets.

You can contact Nik Quaife, Zoetrope PR (nik@zoetrope.ie) or Frances Mitchell, Crash Ensemble (admin@crashensemble.com), for the New York press release.

Our friends in the Irish Chamber Orchestra have a new program coming up. Of interest to Crash fans would be the performance of 2 Finnish works by Aulis Sallinen and Einojuhani Rautavaara. These pieces will be performed by the Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto.

You can check out more information at

http://www.irishchamberorchestra.info/

We recently discovered a link in relation to our 2005 concert Bryars/Rzewski.

To quote:

"An awesome recording of Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together” in a live performance by the Crash Ensemble with Gavin Friday. Picked up directly from Rzewski himself in Kansas City by Scott Unrein. Not available commercially. Rzewski says it’s his favorite recording of the work."

You can listen to the actual recording from the following link:

http://nonpop.scottunrein.org/2006/10/22/nonpop-show-016/ 

Crash Ensemble premier a new work by Dennehy for Iarla Ó Lionáird in Dublin and New York in 2007

Crash Ensemble: Strange Folk, 10 February, 8pm at Samuel Beckett Theatre

In an eagerly anticipated highlight of 2007, Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading contemporary classical music group, will premier a new work by Donnacha Dennehy for Sean Nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird as part of a unique celebration of newly composed music inspired by the sounds and ideas of ethnic music.

Called STRANGE FOLK, this one-night concert at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, will not only be the occasion for the premier of Dennehy’s large new piece for Iarla and the group in advance of its New York debut, but for the first time in the ensemble’s ten-year history, they will be presenting work by the important composers Osvaldo Golijov, and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, alongside an Indonesian-influenced piece by Bang On A Can’s Evan Ziporyn.

STRANGE FOLK will feature the conductor Alan Pierson.

 Tickets from Central Ticket Bureau, ph (01) 872112   www.centralticketbureau.com

We are making great headway with the website, and have launched our extensive CONCERTS and REPERTOIRE pages. You can now see the full history of Crash concerts from the last 10 years, and also peruse our repertoire at leisure.

We have also posted live images from our Back to Back concert in November. Hope you enjoy! 

We've given the new website a new design, and are in the process of creating a database of concerts and repertoire, which will be online soon.  Sign up to our newsletter on the contact page for all the latest news.