Songs of Travel (2024)* Elaine Agnew (1967) 

Songs of Travel is a Creative Europe Cooperation Project that aims to raise awareness and foster empathy for climate change and migration through music. In collaboration with the Austrian game developers Causa Creations, Elaine composed the specifically curated soundtrack for Songs of Travel, an interactive graphic novel that explores various aspects of and collectively paints a vivid picture of the topic of migration through the personal stories of five individuals as they fled their troubled homelands of Syria, Vietnam, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine in search of new beginnings in Europe.

Premiered at Music for Galway’s 2024 Cellissimo Festival with the original soundtrack performed live against a large-scale projection of the visual novel, Songs of Travel was then performed in Sweden (Fairplay Chamber Music), Norway (Valdres Sommersymfoni), the Netherlands (Piano Biënnale) and most recently featured as part of an exhibition Substanz at the Künstlerhaus Gallery in Vienna.

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble is Northern Ireland’s cutting edge contemporary music group, featuring a world-class group of musicians who specialise in the performance of modern music. They are Ensemble in-Residence at Queen's University Belfast and as dedicated Industry Professionals, the ensemble works closely alongside students and fellow creatives at QUB, performing in two of the finest venues in Belfast; the Harty Room and the Sonic Lab at SARC. As such, they are able to explore the full spectrum of acoustic and electronic music, which is also reflected in their programming. 

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

Violin - Marta Piórkowska

Cello - David McCann

Clarinet - Sarah Watts

Piano - Daniel Browell

Perc - Alex Petcu

Gamer - Leonid Kuzmenko

Photo credit: Neil Harrison