New Music Dublin 2021
New Music Dublin was held online this year. Several musicians, music ensembles, artists, producers, composers brought us over 15 virtual performances with 33 world premieres of new music compositions and it was streamed on http://newmusicdublin.ie. A quote of the sheer effort to bring this festival to fruition is below.So New Music Dublin 2021 is, explicitly, a festival for lockdown conditions. It’s a set of ideas, a programme made up of solutions to the question posed above: how do we make music together, when we can’t be together? These solutions stretch from how to get orchestras back together – both on stage, and remotely – through to making music individually, and from music beamed-over-thousands-of-miles internationally, to wholly unobserved and unwitnessed private music-making. Every event in New Music Dublin is framed and presented in this spirit of exploration, enquiry and engagement, of existing despite the existential threats we all face.Source: https://www.newmusicdublin.ie Several of the music groups such as the Crash Ensemble, Evlana, Kirkos Ensemble, and National Symphony Orchestra crafted music performances for online viewing and playback.
Crash Ensemble
The Crash Ensemble commisioned many new music works from up and coming and established composers. What is of interest to this visual music blog was how the use of the visual element was used to broadcast the performance of these works online to create a really interesting online experience of new music. Crash Ensemble's videographer Laura Sheeran produced several video's for Crash Ensemble's [R E A C T I O N S] music composer commissions which were presented across three concerts held during the festival - This Is The Space Part I - 24 April 2021; WingForm - 24 April 2021; This Is The Space Part II - 25 April 2021; Granulated Frequencies - 25 April 2021. As well as the Free State 13 commusions, Nine composers were also invited to create a new composition scored for two instruments from the ensemble and to explore their response to the pandemic. The videos with music were premiered on musictown's website, a week before the New Music Dublin presentations.
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| Crash Ensemble - This is the Space/ Part 1 |
The visual element or what could be called the video element, really made the online presentation of the new music so much more intimate and brought that visual element of performance into the online viewing screen. Laura Sheeran, Crash Ensemble's videographer created really awesome videos for each of the commissions. Each video had a distinctive style and treatment with hints of the music score, washes of colour and motion colour interspersed with close-ups of the action of the musicians hand and their music instrument. It made for a really engaging viewing online.
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| Crash Ensemble - Wingform |
Not only were their visuals by Laura Sheeran, but also a really intriguing video set with lighting installations by video designer Jack Phelan for an incredible music composition by Wingform. Several films/videos to accompany other music compositions and music performacnes were also presented, such as Eoin Healy's film accompanying Deirdre Gribbins music composition 'Invitation to a Journey' inspired by Irish modernist designer Eileen Gray. A beautiful intermingling of images interspersed with the recording of the musicians performing was presented by Irish producer and DJ Ellen King (ELLLL), titled ‘Images and Sensations’. Robert Coleman's new music composition also had an image element to the production.
In the small space of an individual music concert viewing, these images and videos interspersed with recordings of live performances by musicians was really so well produced and added a really rich visual and performative extra layer to the whole online experience.
ONLINE FOR A LIMITED TIME
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Crash Ensemble present REACTIONS – Crosstalk by Anna Murray with film by Laura Sheeran