School of Creative Arts

CONCERT: Breanndán Ó Beaghlaoich, Tommy Peoples, and Laoise Kelly

Description: A trio of Irish traditional music’s finest join forces, with three very distinct regional styles bringing adventure to every set of tunes. Representing the Dingle Peninsula is Breanndán Ó Beaghlaoich, whose fiery button accordion playing and heartfelt singing echo the stormy beauty of the West Kerry coastline. He has three acclaimed solo albums to his name, as well as numerous recordings with the groups Boys of the Lough. The legendary Tommy Peoples brings the rabble-rousing Donegal fiddle style to the party. Tommy became renowned as a founding member of The Bothy Band and half of a powerful duet with Chieftains flute player Matt Molloy. He subsequently moved to County Clare, and in more recent years has performed primarily as a solo musician. His most recent recording was ""The Quiet Glen,"" which includes a number of his own compositions. Equally influential is virtuoso harpist Laoise Kelly, who has breathed new life into the national instrument with her reinterpretation of dance music and the O'Carolan canon. A founding member of The Bumblebees with whom she recorded two albums and toured worldwide, she collaborates regularly with Scottish Gaidhlig singer Kathleen MacInnes and Clare fiddler Michelle O’Brien.
Venue: Harty Room
Booking info: Free admission

CONCERT:Big Ears - Sonic art for public ears - final showcase event

Description:

The Big Ears training course runs March 8-10, 2013. The showcase will take place at 7pm on Sunday, March 10, in the Sonic Lab. Big Ears is a public engagement training course for PhD students in the UK. It provides an opportunity for sonic arts researchers and local children to learn from each other, while producing a unique showcase event in the cutting-edge performance space of the Sonic Arts Research Centre. Big Ears is facilitated by Northern Ireland's leading children's arts organisation, “Young at Art” (www.youngatart.co.uk), and it allows 8 funded researchers to work alongside the renowned Belfast Children’s Festival. Supported by experts in the areas of performance, composition, mobile and gaming technologies, community projects, and public engagement, Big Ears enables participating children and researchers to play with sounds, images and lots of gadgets in a collaborative environment. Together, they produce ear-opening audio stories of faraway worlds, incredible adventures, gooey monsters, and sonic dragons. The project was funded by the HEA and conceived by Dr. Franziska Schroeder. Two PhD researchers, Emily Robertson and Enrico Bertelli, are leading the 2013 event. For more information, see the Big Ears website (www.bigearsbelfast.tumblr.com and http://www.somasa.qub.ac.uk/~BigEars/index.html

Venue: Sonic Lab
Booking info: Please Email: bigearsconference@gmail.com as tickets for this event are limited.

CONCERT: Royal String Quartet

Description: The Royal Quartet continue their Polish + season with Gorecki's 1st Quartet, Gra yna Bacewicz's prize winning 4th quartet and Borodin's 2nd Quartet.
Venue: Great Hall
Booking info: Free admission

CONCERT:Franziska Schroeder performes new works by PhD composers

Description: Since 2009, Franziska has been presenting an annual showcase of new works by PhD composers from the School of Creative Arts. This initiative was developed to showcase current compositional work, but more importantly to allow PhD students to work closely with a performer on the development of their creative practice.The main stipulation for this process is that the works be written in close contact between the composer and the performers involved. In this way, the performers can provide input into the creative development of the work, record source sounds, and develop notational strategies for the pieces. Franziska's interest in new technologies and digital media has been a driving factor for this working process, and as such composers are encouraged to explore their musical language in this context. In recent years, the showcase concert has included works for the four main saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone), accordion, bagpipes, live- electronics, visuals, networked instruments, resonating metal plates and cardboard boxes. All compositions have been premiered in the world-renowned Sonic Lab. Today's concert will include works that explore the timbral idiosyncrasies of the saxophone through extended techniques and live electronics as well as more traditional approaches to the instrument. For more info and archived recordings, please see: http://www.somasa.qub.ac.uk/~fschroeder/Showcase.html
Venue: Sonic Lab
Booking info: Free admission

CONCERT: ‘Before And After The End Of Time’

Description: FIDELIO TRIO, ROBERT PLANE (clarinet)
This, the first of two exciting concerts by Fidelio Trio and Robert Plane (clarinet), forms part of a study programme on the impact of Messiaen’s 'Quatuor pour la fin du temps', perhaps the most enduring chamber work of the last century. The mini-festival also includes a keynote talk at 1pm today by Messiaen authority Dr Caroline Rae, a young composers’ workshop and, as climax, a performance in tomorrow’s lunchtime concert of the Quatuor itself. Fidelio Trio are among the leading younger new music ensembles of today, taking a huge repertoire of new and commissioned works around the world; currently the Trio is the ensemble in residence at St Patrick’s Drumcondra (Dublin City University). Robert Plane is one of Europe’s most celebrated clarinet soloists, as well as being principal clarinet of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; a frequent visitor to these shores, he was from 2002 to 2009 an artist in residence in Queen’s School of Music and Sonic Arts.
Venue: Harty Room
Booking info: Free admission

CONCERT: Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du Temps

Description: As the final event of our feature around a great classic, this programme presents that single work, Messiaen’s 'Quatuor pour la fin du temps', perhaps the most enduring chamber work of the last century. Despite the immense influence of the work and its famously unusual birth, premiered in freezing conditions in a Silesian prison camp, a live performance is a rare treat and certainly a major event, given the work’s eight-movement substance. In the final movement, Louange a l’Éternité de Jésus, the solo violin rides into the ether upon a pulsating halo of shining chords, and musical time is truly suspended. It is an unmissable experience.
Venue: Harty Room
Booking info: Free admission

CONCERT: Transparency

Description: MOBILE: Fernando Iazzetta et al.

Transparency is a performance that brings some of the artistic outcomes of MOBILE, a research project focused on exploring interactive processes in artistic creation. The project is carried out at the University of São Paulo, Brazil under the direction of Fernando Iazzetta. One of the main goals of this project is to create an interface between technological research, critical reflection and the exploration of creative processes. The interdisciplinary nature of the group is revealed by its academic production as well as by the collaborative processes that give rise to artistic works.
Venue: Sonic Lab
Booking info:

Jaap Blonk in concert and conversation

Description: Experimental vocalist Jaap Blonk will give a concert followed by a Voice / Text-Sound / Improvisation Workshop (All welcome)
Venue: Sonic Lab
Booking info:

Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music

Description: Soundscape and beyond This year’s festival takes Soundscape, in the broadest sense, as its starting point, featuring works which exemplify the genre and critical responses to the concept. Barry Truax – one of the original members of the World Soundscape Project, and pioneer of granular synthesis – premieres his latest 8-channel work Aeolian Voices in the Sonic Lab, and performs his From the Unseen World for piano and six digital soundtracks.
Agostino di Scipio presents some of his Audible Ecosystemics, and there are concerts from metatrumpeter Jonathan Impett and virtuoso hurdy-gurdy player and violinist Stevie Wishart. The festival moves outside SARC in variety of ways, featuring Luke Abbott’s beautifully heard electronica, and installations in local gallery spaces and outside.
A symposium on Saturday 27 April will include papers from Barry Truax, and other practitioners and theorists engaged with soundscape.
Venue: See the Sonorities website for more information http://www.sonorities.org.uk
Booking info: See programme for full information