Engage Arts Festival
Saturday 24 September, 2011
ENGAGE Arts Festival | September 22-25, 2011 | www.engageartsfestival.com
Festival Director, Eugene O’Hea said: “This festival is a celebration of musicians, poets, writers, actors and painters. Its ethos is to showcase both established and emerging artists with an emphasis on promoting up and coming artists of every discipline.”
With over 80% of events free of charge, an emphasis on showcasing the best of Irish contemporary talent, and in a beautiful County Cork location, ENGAGE is rapidly becoming a Festival to be included on the annual ‘Must-catch’ calendar.
ENGAGE Bandon Arts Festival is supported by The Arts Council of Ireland and Cork County Council
CRASH ENSEMBLE | St Peter’s Church | Saturday, September 24 | 8.30pm | €20/€15
Crash Ensemble’s innovative and masterly blend of orchestra and electronics is lauded internationally and at home, and has been enjoyed by audiences in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, the UK, USA and Canada since its foundation in 1997. Grá agus Bás, the recent album released by co-founder and composer, Donnacha Dennehy, has been named by NPR as one of its Top 25 Albums of 2011 and critically acclaimed around the globe, with a 5* review from The Guardian.
“[Crash Ensemble] … the Irish new-music band that plays with the energy and spirit of a rock group.” – The New York Times
Crash Culture Night
Friday 23 September, 2011
THE IRISH TIMES
Friday Sept 23rd
Theatre events have responded with some imagination this year, but Bray’s Mermaid Arts Centre has best caught the spirit of the night with a three-header that is beyond tantalising: Fishamble’s award-winning Silent , Crash Ensemble’s Aisling Gheal for Cello and Electronics , CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s film, Deep End Dance and, finally, a Crash/Cois collaboration in Cello Counterpoint .
It’s that level of diversity and one-off specialness that honours the event, where memories and passions are acquired that may not last not a night, or a year, but a lifetime.
The Reich Effect
Sunday 31 July, 2011
August 3rd 2011
Cork Opera House's five-day festival showcased the best of contemporary music
Nikki ffrench Davis
'Crash Ensemble excelled also but made the strongest impressions with Donnacha Dennehy's music, as well as a gripping performance of Frederick Rzewski's Coming Together with Gavin Friday'.
For full listings: reicheffect.tumblr.com
Video: http://blog.gavinfriday.com/
The Intelligence Park- Gerald Barry
Wednesday 18 May, 2011
IMMA, Dublin, 21 May 2011
This concert performance of Gerald Barry's first opera, The Intelligence Park, was the first time the opera has been aired since its initial production twenty-one years ago at the Almeida Festival in London. A raucous and triumphant show, it was a salute to the first foray into opera by an idiosyncratic opera composer.
Barry, Ireland's foremost art music composer, was in the headlines recently when his opera The Importance of Being Earnest had its debut concert performance in Los Angeles, given by the LA Philharmonic conducted by Tom Adès. Adès is a champion of Barry's music and the opera received a rave review by Mark Swed of The LA Times. But others were less enamoured: many season ticket holders, disgusted by what they heard, walked out, and a slew of angry responses followed Swed's effusive article.
Controversy of this sort is nothing new to Barry. In 1988, his orchestral work Cheveux-de-frise – the name is taken from a military term with connotations for England's imperial past in Ireland – was heavily booed upon its premiere performance at the Proms. And Barry's opera The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, given its stage premiere at the Coliseum in 2005 by ENO, to generally favourable reactions, had vocal detractors; The Telegraph, for example, calling it 'a repellent opera, stuffed with cheap contempt, arty pretensions and hideous music.'
There was no such danger here of a negative response to Barry's spike-pronged music. The atmosphere in The Irish Museum of Modern Art was convivial and celebratory, picking up on the high spirits and pride that had descended on the country with the Queen's visit. Many artistic and cultural luminaries of Irish public life were visible in the crowd before the concert, having made the trip to IMMA following the Queen's visit to Trinity College the previous afternoon, where many of them had met the sovereign.
It was a week in Dublin that wasn't short of of event. One of Ireland's most distinguished politicians, Dr Garrett Fitzgerald, passed away on Thursday, an event, too, that had an impact on the concert: the libretto of The Intelligence Park is by Vincent Deane, Fitzgerald's son-in-law, who was absent on the night.
The events of The Intelligence Park happen over a couple of days in Dublin in 1753. The plot follows the composer Robert Paradies (baritone Roderick Williams), an opera seria composer who is suffering from writer's block. Flanked perennially by his companion D'Esperaudieu (tenor John Daszak), Paradies is engaged to Jerusha Cramer (soprano Sarah Gabriel), the daughter of the rich judge Joshua Cramer (bass Stephen Richardson). But Paradies becomes obsessed with Jerusha's singing teacher, the castrato Serafino (countertenor Andrew Watts), in turn attended by his own companion Faranesi (mezzo Loré Lixenberg); and when Serafino elopes with Jerusha, all hell breaks loose.
The opera offers plenty in the way of jealousy, obsession, love, and betrayal, and to this end is quite traditional in its approach to the form. But in most other respects it is far removed: most obviously in the clamorous orchestral score and the gymnastic vocal writing, which reflect what Barry calls 'the coolness and bizarre artificiality' of Deane’s libretto.
Said libretto unfortunately for the most part eluded the listener's ear. The loudness of the acoustic in the venue and the nature of the writing precluded one's grasping the words being sung, and since the action wasn't staged, and no surtitles were available in the venue, and the libretto wasn't printed in the programme, it was at times difficult to follow the action. But a synopsis was provided in the programme and in many ways the music spoke for itself.
One of the chief sources of entertainment was the angular absurdity of the vocal writing. The standout was Richardson as Judge Cramer, directed much of the time to sing in falsetto and rich in exaggerated facial expressions. In the second scene of act one he listed the household products in his possession with a gradually swooping vocal contour that was hilariously pulled off. The other standout was Watts as the castrato Serafino. This was the third time I’ve witnessed Watts in performance and the power and precision of his countertenor always impresses.
Less impressive was the young Sarah Gabriel, her voice too thin to command her demanding part, though in the expressivity of her performance she someway made that up. The other singers, including the boy soprano Gavin Jones, pulled together well.
Much of the credit for the success of this production must go to The Crash Ensemble. Though at first too loud in relation to the vocalists, a good balance was soon struck and the weird sonic mishmash of Barry's score couldn't have wanted a better realisation. All credit, too, to conductor Richard Baker, who conducted with concentration and mettle.
By Liam Cagney
Dawn Upshaw and Iarla O Lionaird in "That the Night Come"
Saturday 2 October, 2010
Feldman - IMMA May 30th
Sunday 30 May, 2010
Strange Folk - Montclair, New Jersey
Saturday 8 May, 2010
http://www.peakperfs.org/insite/?p=2105
As a critic, I do my best to find the meaning in art, to deconstruct why something exists, and sometimes that’s tough to answer. Sure, some art is overtly political, and some art can be a triumph of storytelling. Crash Ensemble, the Irish musical group that closed out another stellar season at Peak Performances, may have been both of those things, but I couldn’t tell—to me, the group was simply an aesthetic delight.
Performing two separate concerts, Strange Folk on May 8 and Bright Visionon May 9, Crash Ensemble brought vitality and excitement to instrumental music that’s eluded my naive, pop-addled ears over my short lifetime. Perhaps I could make allusion to postminimalism or polystylism, but that would be doing a dishonor to the Wikipedia article I road in on. Instead, I’m content to share my delight over the sound that washed over the audience.
From the first song of the first performance, Crash made an impression with its offbeat, strong, counterintuitive sounds. It was pure bravado. The performance continued with music just as dramatic and bold as the first piece but often laced with melancholy. At times, I felt as though I was listening to a wonderful hybrid of the Kronos Quartet and Daft Punk. At other times, it felt closer to Philip Glass combined with Bernard Herrmann or Clint Mansell, Jonny Greenwood, and Björk. All of these talents have in common the theme of repetition. The composer often repeated a refrain over and over, building on it each time, until seconds later, I was no longer listening to the same song—bizarrely, I never knew what would come next. Yes, the music had a certain consistency that never translated into a lack of imagination.
The Sunday afternoon performance, while much more subdued, was in its own way just as bold as the Saturday performance. In one moment that evoked John Cage, a pianist, accompanied by an almost solar-bright light, stole the show with a performance that had the instrumentalist popping the keys while literally handling the strings inside the piano. At that moment, it was the purest music could be, removing the separation between the artist and the art. And yet, it wasn’t necessarily a statement being made but simply a necessity to achieve the desired sound.
I said earlier that Crash Ensemble has a consistent sound, and I don’t think I’m wrong. Yet it’s undeniable that they bend genre to their whim. There were times when I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of a Kennedy-era spy film/romantic comedy, and then minutes later, they evoked a melodic pattern reminiscent of Stephen Sondheim, while never losing their own very specific musical identity. I think I even heard a bit of a metal influence somewhere.
So maybe everything about this description makes no sense; perhaps my
expertise in the field of contemporary classical (isn’t that an
oxymoron?) is limited to Béla Bartók, Eric Whitacre, and (ahem) John
Williams. I could say it doesn’t matter, but that’d be a lie, since
critics must understand the field they write about. I can only say this:
the great pleasure and greatest triumph of Crash Ensemble—and indeed
the best of Peak Performances—is not the one-sided artistic conversation
that scares so many away from live performance. No. It’s the
invigoration of knowing there’s an entire world of music and art to
discover, waiting to be heard, seen, and experienced. It was a hell of a
way to end the season—not with a bang, definitely not with a whimper,
but with a crash.
DEAF: Roger Doyle @ 60
Sunday 25 October, 2009
"Standouts were Under the Green Time ('an image of Ireland without the sweet Celtic wrapping') for uilleann pipes and electronic tape, a gratingly sweet squall exploring the hitherto unremarked ground between traditional Irish and contemporary industrial music (performed by Brian O’Huiginn); Cool Steel Army for piano and laptop percussion, which sounded like a cross between Michael Nyman and Autechre’s 'Second Bad Vibel', periodic blasts of static giving heft to moody piano arpeggiation (performed by Doyle himself alongside Ian McDonnell); and Passades No. 6, an electro-acoustic work that was played over spacialised speakers to the apposite accompaniment of a black and white animated film lulling the viewer through hypnagogic abstractions."
Liam Cagney, www.musicalcriticism.com
DEAF: Mimimal
Saturday 24 October, 2009
"Crash are undoubtedly Ireland's foremost contemporary music outfit, their concerts always ones to look forward to on the musical calendar...they consistently attract a large audience for contemporary classical concerts – Saturday's concert was sold out, with a crowd outside the venue hoping for cancellation tickets – Crash's outlook is exemplary and to be commended."
Liam Cagney, www.musicalcriticism.com
Double Portrait: Lang & Andriessen
Friday 5 June, 2009
Louis Andriessen, the best-known living composer from the Netherlands, was the subject of the début concert by the Crash Ensemble back in 1997. Crash celebrated his 70th birthday at the venue of that début appearance this weekend (a day before the actual birthday), and paired Andriessen’s work with pieces by David Lang (born 1957), a composer from the other side of the Atlantic (New York resident, but Los Angeles born), for whom Andriessen proved to be a seminal influence.
For Lang, Andriessen’s achievement was that he simply ignored the dichotomy between minimalism and modernism, a dichotomy, Lang says, which was felt far more keenly in the US than in Europe. Andriessen undermined the dichotomy by simply taking what he wanted from either side of the divide.
Lang, one of the trio of composers behind one of New York’s big new music franchises, Bang on A Can, shares with Andriessen a fondness for punchy impact (brake drums feature in the percussion line-up for a number of pieces), but this programme enterprisingly showed softer sides in the outputs of both men.
This seemed entirely apt in excerpts from Lang’s Memory Pieces (memory here used in the sense of memorial) for solo piano. Andriessen’s Garden of Eros is a string quartet with a light, floating quality that goes against the grain of the genre by pitting first violin against the other three instruments.
Such internal conflicts were also a feature of Lang’s Pierced, a kind of concerto for a trio of cello, percussion and piano (set against single strings in Crash’s performance rather than string orchestra) where soloists and ensemble inhabit independent worlds. Lang’s Forced March explores the interaction of an irregular melody against explosively drum-machine-like percussion.
The tour-de-force performance, however, was Andriessen’s Workers Union of 1975, a piece without fixed scoring that’s intended “for any loud sounding group of instruments”. One of Crash’s trademarks is the group’s fondness for amplification (here it was applied with timbre-distorting effect to Memory Pieces and Garden of Eros), and in Workers Union it helped the ensemble to the rock music-like consistency of high volume that its audiences seem to like so much. MICHAEL DERVAN - The Irish Times, Tuesday 9th June 2009
Free State: Kevin Volans
Thursday 9 April, 2009
“Crash Ensemble, bastion of contemporary music… Muted ripples blossom delicately like some exotic plant. Pizzicato cello sets the pulse while imperceptible tempo alterations create a hypnotic atmosphere… Come what may, Crash Ensemble is unflappable in execution” – Pat O’Kelly, The Irish Independent April 09 (Free State: Kevin Volans, April 09)
“Volans’ Nine beginnings was performed by the composer himself and John Godfrey. A stillness was created through a constant interweaving, interpolating and juxtaposing of materials arising out of a melodic fragment.
Trumpet, vibe, cello, piano was composed by Volans especially for the occasion. Crash Ensemble negotiated its demanding score with grace: it was a pleasure to be reminded of what pianissimo actually sounds like. Here the initial orchestration was the object – muted trumpet, a halo of vibraphone resonance, Feldman-like piano arpeggios and gentle cello pizzicato.
The evening was an apposite tribute to Kevin Volans; in its very many breathtaking moments, it was a reminder, as a fellow audience member remarked, that, in our lives, we need daily beauty.” - Garrett Sholdice, Journal of Music June/July 09 (Free State: Kevin Volans, April 09)
World View 1 : UK
Friday 28 November, 2008
This well-structured programme presented the British side of a two-concert showcase for Irish and British contemporary music. It included the premiere of a Crash Ensemble commission, Darwin's Sin Draw , by Andrew Poppy (born 1954), which explores musical equivalents of Darwinian ideas. The solo violin (an excellent Darragh Morgan) tussles with the bass-strong ensemble's jagged ostinatos and driving rhythms, and seems to win.
It is hard to write funny music, but Cornish-born (1965) Richard Ayers can. His No 24 (NONcerto for Alto Trombone) (1995) featured impeccably silly interpretations of Ayres's stage directions by trombonist Roderick O'Keefe and tight conducting by Alan Pierson. The piece subverts all concert music, via musical non-sequiturs such as a chorus of lager louts and irreverent contrasts of material.
Prison Song, (2000) by Frank Denyer (born 1943), is more subtly subversive. The flautist does not blow, but breathes; the violin and trombone have muffling mutes - "the ghost of another music" indeed.
Straight Lines in Broken Times2, (1992) by Christopher Fox (born 1955), is a densely worked-out piece, full of concentrated detail, albeit within a somewhat diffuse structure. Nevertheless, its so-British concern with craft is admirable.
Craft was also evident in the control of material and the subtly powerful rhythmic energy of Grind Show (electric) (2007), by Tansy Davies (born 1973). It also lay behind the beautifully clear trajectories of Joe Cutler's (born 1968) Five Mobiles after Alexander Calder . The concert's most consistently luxurious aural experience was offered by Gavin Bryars's (born 1943) Sub Rosa (1986). Its shifts of instrumental tone, harmonics, and chordal colouring challenged the ear and lingered in the memory.
Martin Adams, The Irish Times, Dec 3rd 2008
FREE STATE III
Thursday 27 November, 2008
Crash Ensemble’s name conjures up an image of a group that abandons the established rules of the road in classical music.
Since its foundation ten years ago by composer Donnacha Dennehy, pianist Andrew Synott and clarinetist Michael Seaver, the outfit has made an impact in Ireland and, apparently, even more so abroad.
When it
comes to music, the Crash abandons ‘safety first’, and its reputation
at the cutting edge of contemporary composition has been veritably
bulletproof for most of the decade.It doesn’t ‘do’ melody, lyricism or anything that can be described as normal in the conventional musical sense.
But
it does do odd, eerie, off-the-wall and way-out. And whatever it does,
it is not averse to being described by the New York Times ‘‘an Irish
new music band that plays with the energy and spirit of a rock group’’.
The
only certainty when listening to their sound is that when you allow
yourself to be sucked into their sonic underworld (the theatre was
pitch-black) you become totally absorbed. Take, for instance, the third
piece of six compositions in Free State an annual celebration of new
music premieres by Irish composers, now in its third year at the
O’Reilly Theatre in Belvedere College in Dublin.
Written by Cork
composer John Godfrey, it was titled The Abstract Despotisms of
Calculus...
We were advised that the only way to fully
experience this sound-altering phenomenon was to get out of our seats
and go walkabout while Crash continued to play low-key instrumental
sounds.
A Casual Analysis of Prose
Rhythms, the opening piece by Peter Moran, was an ingenious and
humorous exposition of the natural rhythms in speech which was spoken
(often at supersonic speed) by Natasha Lohan.
My favourite piece was Dublin composer John McLachlan’s Wonder, a gentle and introspective work with little pleasant sounds squirting out of the ensemble."
"...magnificent mayhem arrived in In Beautiful May, which had composer Andrew Hamilton exploring the music fetishes that cohabit one’s memory.This he achieved by trying to play a violin while short, sharp stabs of musical fragments, including rock, opera, country, classical and religious, blared out from the sound system.
The composer found inspiration for this from Schumann’s Dicterliebe, a fact which must be making Mozart, Mendelssohn and the rest turn in their graves. Bizarre, but riveting.
It was left to
the final composition, however, to really justify that ‘‘rock band’’
accolade. Written by Parisbased Sean Clancy, Whisper, Whisper, Whisper
at last unleashed Crash on a thundering piece of dissonance that belied
its title.Gyorgy Ligeti and Gerald Barry were in there somewhere. It’s not normal but it certainly makes you think." Sunday Business Post, December 7th 2008
"Characteristically with this performing group, the strengths of the Irish programme were predominately conceptual. ... it was the composed sounds, the quirky and thought-provoking schemes, that made the evening."
"the most orthodoxly avant garde was Whisper Whisper Whisper* (2007) by the youngest of the six composers, Seán Clancy...This gritty little essay in mechanised expressionism took the Crash players closest to mainstream chamber music."
"
Adding to the seeping colours of a keyboarded background, silvery glockenspiel touches formed the most effective acoustic component in John McLachlan's drifting and enigmatic Wonder (2008).
Two further acoustic-electronic partnerships achieved cogency on the one hand and witty incongruity on the other.
Poignantly melodic playing from Deirdre O'Leary on bass clarinet was melded with restrained and thoughtful taped electronics in Jonathan Nangle's Our headlights blew softly into the black, illuminating very little (2007).
On solo violin and vocals, Andrew Hamilton deftly delivered the acoustic elements of his own In Beautiful May (2008), a cunningly paced join-the-dots exercise that gradually develops disparate sound-shards into a deliciously grotesque chorale.
Theatricality peaked with Peter Moran's self-analysing lecture A Casual Analysis of Prose Rhythms (2004). Punctuating the catchily variable sound patterns with woodblock, Natasha Lohan negotiated the fickle and sometimes headlong prosody to a fault.
Like the clang of some great bell frozen in time, however, it was John Godfrey's 20-minute experiment with tone in its purest form, The Abstract Despotisms of Calculus (2008), that created the evening's most potent chemistry of treasurable strangeness"
Andrew Johnstone, Dec 1st 2008, The Irish Times
Bang on a Can Marathon
Saturday 31 May, 2008
"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
Canberra International Chamber Music Festival
Monday 12 May, 2008
"Relentless as waves breaking over craggy rocks, this piece premiered at
an Irish regional arts festival to an audience strongly familiar with
the tradition it explores. Epic, driven, exciting and grossly
over-amplified, it was an exercise in powerful emotion, textures and
motions. I’ve never heard a trumpet asked to ramp its way through tonal
landscapes like this." - Zsuzsanna Soboslay, realtimearts.net - Aug/Sept 08
Music of Phill Niblock
Wednesday 23 April, 2008
"This concert of music by Phill Niblock – the ‘forgotten minimalist’ – had the feel of a ‘happening’, spread out over the four back floors of the Temple Bar Galleries, a throwback to the 1960s, Andy Warhol-esque experiences with film projections...many around me seemed transported by the drone, sitting with eyes closed in a trance-like state."
Seán Ó Máill, JMI, July/August 08
SHINDIG - Marathon - 12-13.30
Saturday 13 October, 2007
"Crash have definitely change they stylistic expectation of the public in regard to new music in Ireland, taking it away from a bias towards European modernism, and that is an achievement belonging uniquely to them."
'There is an iconoclastic quality in their programming that seeks to work against prevailing currents, and this is not a figment of their imaginations"
"They have pushed the contemporary music culture in Ireland in a direction that it simply wasn't going heretofore, and they have placed performers inside that culture more strongly that before."
John McLachlan JMI NovDec 07
SHINDIG - Marathon - 14-15.30
Saturday 13 October, 2007
"there is no denying Crash's effectiveness of purpose"
"Where such maverick tendencies are found in Ireland and in Europe, Crash embraces them. The tension and sometimes extraordinary conflict of style that this involves has always been a regular feature of Crash Ensemble concerts, and this is another way in which they have been usefully unique here."
"their programmes always reflecting the messy reality of music today."
John McLachlan JMI NovDec 07
SHINDIG - Marathon - 16-17.30
Saturday 13 October, 2007
"But of course who we are [as Irish people], if it can ever be meaningfully discussed at all, is a dynamic ever changing picture of which Crash is now part."
"[Crash are] central to the rapid development of a rich electronica scene that didn't exist not so long ago, in which new hybrids are flourishing."
"admirably, premiere does not also mean derniére with Crash."
John McLachlan JMI NovDec 07
SHINDIG - Marathon - 19-20.30
Saturday 13 October, 2007
"Some exceptional highlights being [...] Glass's Music in Similar Motion, which the ensemble enjoyed taking at a fair lick, Erik Lund's Missing Intelligence was for me the discovery of the day - a tremendous piece that successfully combined the diverse stylistic strands that Crash bring; quite funky but also embracing complexity"
John McLachlan JMI NovDec 07
SHINDIG - Marathon - 21-22.30
Saturday 13 October, 2007
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.
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?
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 Irish Times Oct 07
Crash & Dennehy in NY
Wednesday 28 March, 2007
From the 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”
Strange Folk!
Saturday 10 February, 2007
"The overall experience was gripping, with moments of fierce, almost ritualistic clangour. It will be interesting to hear Grá agus Bás again."
Journal of Music in Ireland, March 2007
(IR)RATIONAL
Thursday 9 November, 2006
"The satisfying programme, including three of [Tenney's] central pieces, ranged from austere and demanding, to riotous and quirky."
"Critical Band... Its a pattern to observe, rather than music to listen to - but incredibly interesting, simple yet inspired, and demanding."
Alan O'Riordan, Irish Examiner, 14th Nov 06
Dublin Fringe Festival 2004
Sunday 10 October, 2004
“First honour in presenting a new work fell to the Crash Ensemble, premiering Kevin Volans’ 1000 Bars for violin, cello and piano duet… This was a quirky and consistently amusing piece, and the playing communicated it with meticulous care.” – The Irish Times
Gaudeamus Music Week
Monday 6 to Sunday 12 September, 2004
“Most spectacular was Junk Box Fraud by Donnacha Dennehy, in which two singers, two pianos and two winds made a brash sweep from prickling dissonant music to barking major sounds. The accompanying film had a Greenaway-ish allure.” – Frits van der waa De Volkskrant
Crash 2003 Festival
Wednesday 3 December, 2003
The Irish Times (Review of the Year) 16 December, 2003
The Crash Ensemble continues to explore the wilder shores and is without doubt the healthiest contemporary ensemble in this country, with commissions, tours (Denmark, Sweden and England this year) and festivals (the latest just before Christmas) that set Irish music in an international context. …everything is done with iconoclastic confidence and vigour.
John Field Room, 1999
Sunday 26 September, 1999
“The Crash Ensemble has established something of a reputation not just for selling out their concerts, but for having to turn people away on the night. The group’s first appearance in the John Field Room on Sunday ran true to form.” – The Irish Times
“Accomodating mew music ensemble Crash helps the NCH deflect accusations of musical museum status. The transition worked well, with the availabile space – including staircase and balcony – uniquely exploited. A full house heard well-mixed instrumental sonorities in Michael Gordon’s pulsing Yo! Shakespeare, the soundless bow-swiping of Isak Goldschneider’s Four Eyes, multifarious vocal agility in Stripsody by Cathy Berberian and finely blended clarinet playing in Stockhausen’s Knabbenduett. The engaging imaginative display of Donnacha Dennehy’s Junk Box Fraud secured, as previously, the warmest reception.” – Michael Dungan, The Evening Herald
Samuel Beckett Theatre, 23 Oct '97
Thursday 23 October, 1997
“October saw the launch of the Crash Ensemble, a contemporary music group which had to turn people away from its sold-out first gig. With really exciting programming […], this is a group to watch out for.” – Michael Dervan, The Irish Times