HILLTOWN NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL
Saturday 31st July & Sunday 1st August 2010
Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath, Ireland
Featured artists:
Jennifer Walshe
“The most original compositional voice to emerge from Ireland in the past 20 years” (The Irish Times) and “Wild girl of Darmstadt” (Frankfurter Rundschau), composer and performer Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world. She has been the recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York; the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstadt and Akademie Schloss Solitude among others. Walshe has written a large number of operas and theatrical works, including “XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!” an opera for Barbie dolls, available on DVD from Mere Records. www.milker.org Her latest solo CD nature data was released in 2010 and is available from Interval Recordings.
Barbara Lüneburg
Barbara Lüneburg performing on the violin and the viola has made herself a name as both an interpreter of classical and contemporary music. Her playing has been described as passionate, viciously virtuosic, and spectacular.
She won various violin competitions, including the “Prize for the Best Interpretation of Contemporary Music”, awarded at the 4th International Music Competition for Young Culture in Düsseldorf, which displays her special interest in the new music field. Barbara Lüneburg has premiered numerous solo- and chamber music works throughout her career. Her recent solo-CD “The Refined Ear” has gained international attention and praise.
In addition to being a member of various chamber music and contemporary music ensembles, she regularly performs as a soloist of classical and new music in Germany and abroad. Barbara Lüneburg records for radio broadcast, CD- and TV- productions and plays at various international music festivals such as Donaueschinger Musiktage, Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, Bodensee Festival, Bregenzer Festspiele (Austria), Gaudeamus Festival, the Munich Biannual and the Tongyeong International Music Festival (Korea).
As a recipient of grants and scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Scholarship of the German People she studied a/o. at the Tshaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Zorija Schichmurzaeva and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) with David Takeno.
Barbara Lüneburg is a founding member of ensemble Intégrales, the ensemble for unconducted contemporary chamber music (Hamburg/Germany).
www.barbara-lueneburg.com
www.ensemble-Integrales.com
Roberto Oliveira
Roberto Oliveira, born 1979 in Galicia, is a versatile percussionist of contemporary music with international recognition. He surprises with his performances, bringing percussion to its absolute limits.
Graduated (BA) in percussion with "High Mark" at the Koninklijk Conservatorium (Hogeschool van Beeldende Kunsten, Muziek en Dans) in The Hague (Holland); in June 2008 he received a "First Class Honors" for a Master in Music Performance (MMus) at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (DCU Dublin City University) Ireland.
Oliveira has participated at many prestigious contemporary music and percussion festivals like: "I'm Pulse" Manila Contemporary Festival (Philippines), Steve Reich Festival (Holland), "Stock" Leuven Contemporary Festival (Belgium), Junio Musical in Xalapa (Mexico), ZMF Zeltsman Marimba Festival (USA), TIPC Taipei International Percussion Convention (Taiwan), and many others.
He is actively collaborating with the Crash Ensemble, Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble, and is a founding member of Odaiko Percussion Group. He produces his own projects, such as 4 LaMbY in 2002 and ElectroniK KontaineR in 2006. Currently he is immersed in a series of projects of electroacoustic music in collaboration with composers and visual artists from Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
www.robertoliveira.com
Linda O'Keeffe
O'Keeffe is currently studying for a PhD at NUI Maynooth; she is exploring the soundscape as a sociological phenomenon. She has exhibited in Ireland and internationally and is a member of the World Soundscape Project. O’Keeffe is also an editor for the new online sound journal ‘Interference’ she will publish a chapter in a book this September which examines new methodologies for soundscape design in online game worlds. www.lindaokeeffe.com
Akkato
Akkato is an artist living in Ireland. His works are generative and made for projection on walls or buildings. Seriality, iteration and repetition are formal concerns in his work. Electronic art, technology, music and the future are his inspirations.
Aideen Barry
Aideen Barry is a Visual Artist, working in the mediums of performance, installation, film, sculpture, lens based media, musical composition, drawing and animation. Recent Solo Exhibitions include: the morphology of the other, at The Butler Gallery in Kilkenny (IRL), the disjoined and the morphological at The Mermaid Arts Centre (IRL), and of hypothetical evolutions of [an] other, Galway Arts Centre (IRE). Barry has shown internationally at Centre Culturel Irlandais (FR), The Louise T. Bloudin Institute in London (UK), The Walter Phillips Gallery (Canada) and more recently in Sound Design for Future Films at Moderna Museet (Sweden) and at The Wexner Centre for the Arts in Ohio (US). Recent awards include the 2010 Bursary Award for the Visual Arts, and Projects: New Work Award from the Arts Council of Ireland 2010-2011; Travel and Training Awards from The Arts Council of Ireland; Best Experimental Film Award at the Silent Light Film Festival; and the Claremorris Open Award. Barry has recently been shortlisted for the 2010 AIB prize and will show her new body of work from this in 2012 at the Millennium Court Arts Centre in Portadown (NI).
Upcoming projects include a residency at The Headlands Centre for the Arts in California (US) in 2011 and the launch of her public art commission Ludique, which is funded by the National Development Plan and the Irish Government and will be launched in September 2010. The artist is also undertaking a project instigated by Royal Hibernian Academy and the Trinity School of Medicine for 2011.
David Bremner
David Bremner is a composer based in Dublin. He is currently completing a PhD in Composition at DIT under the supervision of Gráinne Mulvey. Current projects include Béal, a festival of new music and text, which will take place in November in Dublin, and his improvised-music-theatre band The open rehearsals.
Cormac Crawley
Cormac Crawley a postgraduate of Queen’s University, Belfast. Having completed my MA in Music Technology I enrolled in the Sonic Arts Research Centre of Queen’s to further explore my research interests that were realised at DkIT. I am now pursuing my PhD under the supervision of Dr. Paul Wilson. My work is based on interactive composition in relation to the natural audible environment. I develop interactive scenarios that harness the relationship between environment and the audio produced in that environment. This often involves the use of sensory technology interacting with various aspects of the climatic environment which will ultimately assist the compositional output. The concept behind my research is to personify audibly the climatic environment.
Gordon Delap
Gordon Delap is from Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. He studied music at Queen’s University, Belfast and City University, London. His composition teachers have included Michael Alcorn, Simon Emmerson, and Denis Smalley. In 2004 he received a PhD from Queen’s University, Belfast.
He specialises in the creation of electro-acoustic music and sonic art. Recent works include ‘Interior’, an installation put together from sounds recorded in the rainforests of Borneo, ‘Beowulf and Grendel’ (2004), a work for live electronics and narrator, and ‘Light Body Corpuscles’ (2005), an audio-visual work commissioned by the British Council.
His music has been performed throughout the world. Recent performances of his work have taken place at the European Media Arts Festival (Osnabrück, Germany), the Sonorities Festival (Belfast), Subliminal Festival (Brussels), the Belfast Festival, and Bimesp (Sao Paulo, Brazil). In 2005 he won the first prize in the Projet Itinerant competition ‘Point de repere’.
Robyn Farah
Robyn Farah is South African composer and interactive sound installation artist. She did her Masters in Sonic Arts at SARC, and her Undergraduate in Music and CMT at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.
Her work has been presented at various venues within Europe, Asia, America and Canada. She is currently based in Belfast, doing free-lance sound work as well as running a home bakery.
Francis Heery
Francis Heery is a composer and performer living in Cork, where he is studying for a PhD in Composition in UCC. His compositional interests include solo instrumental works, chamber works, electro-acoustic compositions and sound installations. He is also active as a performer, specializing in electro-acoustic improvisation. He is a member of the Irish Composer’s Collective and many of his works have been performed or broadcast internationally. He was recently awarded the Aloys Fleischmann Composition Prize at UCC where he works as a part-time lecturer.
Piaras Hoban
Piaras Hoban is composer currently pursuing postgraduate studies in composition at UCC. He works with both instrumental and digital media. Recent output includes a work for guitar orchestra, which was toured extensively by the Diversus Guitar Ensemble in 09/10, and a real-time, algorithmic audio/visual piece.
His work has been performed at various festivals including the International Computer Music Conference, Gaudeamus Music Week, D.E.A.F, Sonorities Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Anthony Kelly
Anthony Kelly was born in Dublin, Ireland. He studied at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design (now IADT) graduating in 1989 with a distinction in Fine Art. Kelly works in a variety of media - Painting, Printmaking, Video and Sound. Although diverse in construction, his work chiefly concentrates on the shifting and fragmentary nature of sensory experience. To explore this he uses the discarded or overlooked aspects of the world around us which he enlarges/amplifies to create his work.
Recent exhibitions include More Practical Dreaming at The Paul Kane Gallery, Dublin, Altogether Now, Mutability both at the Stone Gallery, Dublin, Practical Dreaming, The Courtyard, Herefordshire’s Centre for the Arts, England, Unknown Point, Visualise Carlow and Two Places, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast & Limerick City University. During 2010 and 2011 he will participate in Shorelines, a cultural exchange project between Ireland and Newfoundland and projects at Crawford Gallery & Triskel Arts Centre, Cork. Kelly maintains an ongoing collaboration with David Stalling. He is also a member of Projector Collective and Solus Film Collective.
www.anthonykelly.net
Anthony Kelly and David Stalling
Anthony Kelly and David Stalling have been collaborating on a series of sound and visual works since 2003, which have been widely exhibited.
Some of their shows include The Felt Experience Project, Catalyst Arts Centre, Belfast; Components, Sirius Arts Centre, Cork; Binaural Audio Art Symposium, University of Lancashire, UK; Cead in China, Shanghai and Beijing, screenings at Anthology Film Archives in New York (2006 & 2008) and the sound art exhibition Two Places at Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast and Limerick University. Auralog, a collaborative installation with Slavek Kwi & Sean McCrum, was shown at Thisisnotashop Gallery, Dublin as part of the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF). In 2009, Kelly and Stalling exhibited at the Basement Gallery, Dundalk, and were commissioned to create Unknown Point, a series of sonic and visual installations as part of Visualise Carlow. Recently, Bernard Clarke presented a 90 minute programme about the project on lyric fm’s Nova programme. Their recorded work has been released on the sound art label farpointrecordings.com, on the recent CD project soundwearenow.org, and two tracks were released on Wire Tapper 16 (Dec 2006) and Wire Tapper 20 (Oct 2008), distributed with Wire Magazine. Kelly and Stalling also perform live improvisations, as a duo as well as with other groups, such as The Quiet Club (Danny McCarthy & Mick O’Shea), and Soun.din improvisation group. They have recently completed the Auralog project 'Soundwalking Conche' in Newfoundland.
Forthcoming projects include participation in the group project Shorelines, Newfoundland & Ireland curated by Sean McCrum and Charlotte Jones and projects at the Crawford Gallery, Cork and The Return at The Goethe Institute, Dublin during 2011. www.radiossilent.org
John Lato
John Lato (b. 1979) has written music in a wide variety of different media, ranging from the symphonic band to acousmatic tape music. Dr. Lato has numerous performances of his chamber and wind ensemble works throughout the United States, and his electronic music has been performed across the U.S. and Ireland, including performances at the 2005 International Computer Music Conference, SEAMUS, and Spark festivals. He was awarded 1st prize in the 2008 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Composer Commission Competition. John received the D.M.A from UT-Austin in 2009, where he studied with Russell Pinkston and Donald Grantham. John is currently living in Maynooth, Ireland.
Danny McCarthy
McCarthy studied at the National College of Art and Design. He has pioneered both performance art and sound art in Ireland and he continues to be a leading exponent exhibiting and performing both in Ireland and abroad including SPAN2 in London and at "Hearing Place" in Melbourne, Australia. His work is in the collections of the Arts Council of Ireland, Crawford Municipal Gallery and Limerick City Gallery and numerous other public and private collections in Ireland and abroad. In November 2007 he presented his sound and visual installation “(Re)sounding Memories/Watering The Plants” in Le Lieu Centre dArte Actuelle Québec, Canada, where he also presented a live sound performance. His work has appeared on numerous CD's and has been broadcast widely on both radio and T V. He is a founding director of Triskel Arts Centre and of the National Sculpture Factory and is a director of Art Trail and the Sirius Arts Centre Cobh. McCarthy is the recipient of numerous awards and bursaries from both the Irish Arts Council and Dept of Foreign Affairs and has represented Ireland abroad at various exhibitions. He is a First Prize winner in EV+A (selector Pierre Restany).
More recent exhibitions include his piece “waTEr” at the Bourges International Electro Acoustic Music Festival (France) and “Sounding The Town”(installation) and “Wa(l)king The Dream”(live sound performance with Viv Corringham) in the Sirius Arts Centre Cobh Ireland. . He has exhibited as part of the “Trace Retrospective 2000-05” in Franklin Furnace, New York. In early 2006 he founded The Quiet Club (with Mick O’Shea) a floating membership sound (art and electronics) performance group and have presented works all over Ireland, Europe, Japan and Canada. Their first CD “Tesla” was released on Farpoint Recordings. They curate the annual Sonic Vigil Festival and are currently preparing for tours to China and Poland later this year. A solo exhibition ”Listening With The Sound Turned Off” took place in Triskel Arts Centre in 2008 and a book + CD on his work “LISTEN hEAR” (Texts by Julie Forrester & David Toop) has recently been published by Farpoint Recordings. In 2009 his work was the subject of a special ninety minute programme on Nova on Lyric FM presented by Bernard Clarke. He is currently exhibiting as part of “Postcards from the Celtic Tiger” in the Xuhui Arts Museum, Shanghai, China.
www.dannymccarthy.ie
Suzanne McDonnell
Suzanne McDonnell is a singer and songwriter from Dublin. She holds a BA in Applied Music from DkIT, specializing in solo vocal performance for the voice. With a background in musical theatre, Suzanne performs regularly in various productions, and has been involved in The Marriage of Figaro, The Wizard of Oz, Grease, and The Gondoliers. In 2009 she performed in a production of Godspell at the Grand Opera House, Belfast. Suzanne is an accomplished arranger, specialising in vocal arrangements. Some of her vocal influences include Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Stevie Wonder and Jill Scott.
Hubert Michel
Hubert Michel (born October 13th, 1976, France) As a child he spent hours with the dial of his radio which allowed him to discover a broad range of soundscapes. In 1998, Michel discovered electroacoustic music and decided to attend the Roland Cahen Courses in Montbéliard where he received the "art et technique du son" diploma in June 2000. In 2000-2001, Hubert Michel followed the Christine Groult Courses in Pantin. At this time he was also a pedagogic assistant of the Cybersongosse composition course at IMEB. In 2002, he received a DEM of composition EA with Roger Cochini. In 2003 he relocated to Rouen, Normandy where he created his own sound studio. He likes to use sounds of everyday life like in "Rayures", anecdotic sounds like in "Galets", synthétics sounds like in "Bon et Alors" or sound of different origins like in "Polystyrène".
Hilary Mullaney
Hilary Mullaney (b. 1979, Mayo) is a composer based in Dublin, Ireland. Her compositional output mainly consists of fixed media pieces, which have been broadcast and performed at a number of festivals and concert events worldwide. With funding from the Arts Council of Ireland she has studied at the Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis in Paris in 2005 and completed the Mamori Sound Project residency in Brazil with Francisco Lopez in 2008. She has had works published on CD by Non-Standard, SoundNetwork UK and Leeds Metropolitan University.
Gráinne Mulvey
Gráinne Mulvey studied with Dr Eric Sweeney at WIT, Professor Hormoz Farhat, T.C.D., Dr. Augustin Fernandez, Q.U.B and finally obtained a DPhil in Music, Composition under Professor Nicola LeFanu at York University, England.
She has attended courses in Ireland, (Maynooth Summer School,) England and Europe, studying with Peter Maxwell Davies, Jonathan Harvey, Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho and Boguslaw Schaeffer among others. Her music has been performed and broadcast in Europe, America and Australia. In 1994 she won the Composers' class of the RTÉ Musician of the Future Competition with her chamber work Rational Option Insanity. Her Étude No 1 for piano was chosen to represent Ireland at the International Rostrum of Young Composers in Paris and in 2006, her orchestral work Scorched Earth was represented. She has been the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Young Musician of the Future Award, (Composers Class), the Macaulay Fellowship, prizes from the Arklow Music Festival,
New Music for Sligo and St. John Memorial University, Newfoundland. Her orchestral piece Akanos 2006 was chosen for representation at ISCM World Music Days 2008, in Vilnius, Lithuania and performed by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Robertas Servenikas. It also featured at the 2009 Prague Premiers on 14th march, by the Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Andreas S Weiser. The Danish Vokalensemblet, conductor, Fredrik Malmberg, also represented her at the 2009 ISCM World Music Days with her choral piece Stabat Mater.
She has received many commissions from, amongst others: the Concorde Ensemble, RTÉ N.S.O.I, Trinity College Dublin, the Commissioners of Irish Lights, the Ulster Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia, England, Romanian Radio, the Avant-Garde Akademie, Schwaz, Austria, Cork International Choral Festival and Waterford New Music Week.. Two of her pieces have been recorded by the Concorde Ensemble, Ireland on the Black Box label. She was recently elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s organisation of creative artists.
www.grainnemulvey.com
JJ Quinlan
JJ Quinlan is a graphic, multimedia and games designer. He's worked professionally for the past 15 and is currently lecturing in Creative Multimedia at the Dundalk Institute of Technology. JJ's main interests lie in the area of visual and generative art.
David Stalling
David Stalling is a German composer and installation artist based in Ireland. His work includes instrumental and electroacoustic music for concert performance, dance and film, as well as site specific and gallery based audiovisual installations. He has received commissions and awards from The Arts Council of Ireland, FÁS and Culture Ireland. His music has been performed in Ireland and abroad, and has been broadcast by RTÉ, SWR and CBC. His audiovisual works have been exhibited widely. Exhibitions and projects at Anthology Film Archives, New York; Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing; Ginza Art Laboratory, Tokyo; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; Visualise Carlow; The Rooms, St. John’s, Newfoundland; Biblioteca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt; and many others.
Forthcoming projects include audiovisual installations at The Return gallery, Goethe Institut, Dublin, and The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, during 2011.
David maintains an ongoing collaboration with Anthony Kelly. He is a founding member and director of electroacoustic music ensemble EAR and a member of Solus film collective. He is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland and currently lectures in music at Dundalk Institute of Technology.
www.davidstalling.com
Rory Walsh
Rory Walsh is an audio programmer and composer of electroacoustic music. His software, and his compositions, focuses mainly on real-time manipulation and processing of live sound. He currently lectures in Music at the Dundalk Institute of Technology.