Archived Events

Saturday 13 April 2013, 10:30 am - Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, Limerick

Arts Practice Research: A Symposium

Presented by the School of Music and Theatre (UCC) and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (UL).

Arts Practice Research: A Symposium
Wednesday April 13th:
10.30am - 4pm
Arts Practice Research is a growing area of interest in Irish Higher Education, indicated by the increased opportunities to pursue arts practice doctoral research in Ireland, as well as the growing number of academics pursuing arts practice related research activities. ‘Good Practice in the Quality Assurance of Arts Research Programmes by Practice’ (2010), produced by the working group on practice-based research in the arts established by HETA with support from the IUQB, provides a helpful set of guidelines for the pursuit of arts practice doctoral research but to date, no guidelines exist on the key performance indicators for the evaluation of arts practice research. This event, coordinated by the School of Music and Theatre, University College Cork and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick will offer a number of short presentations by doctoral students currently pursuing Arts Practice PhD research, as well as a panel presentation and discussion on the current debate around key performance indicators in arts practice research.

Schedule:
10.30 – coffee and registration
11.00 – 1.00 – student presentations
1.00-2.00 – buffet lunch
2.00-4.00 – panel presentations and responses

Where:
Arts Practice Research: A Symposium will take place in the Tower Theatre, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick on April 13th from 10.30am to 4pm.

Admission is free but places are limited so it is advisable to to book a place in advance by contacting: Ellen Byrne at 061 202917 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Panel Speakers:
Professor Nicholas Canny
(Vice President for Research, 2005-8, NUI Galway and President of the Royal Irish Academy 2008-11)

Professor Timothy Emlyn Jones
(Dean and Director of Graduate Studies, Burren School of Art)

Responses: Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and Dr. Helen Phelan, University of Limerick, Dr. Bernadette Cronin and Dr. Chris Morris, University College Cork



Presentations of Arts Practice PhDs: Work in Progress

Tom Lane (School of Music and Theatre, University College Cork)
Practice-led research into site-specific music theatre

The first year of my PhD research into site-specific music theatre has focused on establishing what qualities sites lend to performances. In order to clarify the issue I have looked at how performance can direct attention to places which we normally regard as “in-between” or “non-places” such as bridges and transportation. The practice side of my research will be realised in several outdoor site-specific pieces in Cork and Dublin at various degrees of scale.

Tom Lane is a composer and musician. Performances in 2012 included a newly conceived version of his opera FLATPACK directed by Conor Hanratty (nominated for Best Production by Irish Times Theatre Awards), the music for DOGS (winner, Best Design and Best Production at 2012 Absolut Fringe) by Emma Martin Dance and Bird with Boy (Best Production, 2011 Absolut Fringe) by junk ensemble at the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival. Tom Lane is the inaugural recipient of the Seán Ó Riada PhD scholarship in composition for theatre at University College Cork. http://www.tom-lane.com

Dara O’Brien (School of Music and Theatre, University College Cork)
The Endless Search for Sa

This presentation is about the intimate relationship between my arts practice and my PhD research. My research centers on philosophical and spiritual ideology in the culture and practice of Hindustani music. My practice as a sitar player fundamentally motivates, directs and informs this research, both methodologically and conceptually. This lived experience of the musical idiom, coupled with an ongoing process of enculturation is pertinent to a number of central themes: the agency of raga, the ethos of surrender, harnessing a particular form of focus, and raga as a bridge between the sacred and the profane.

Dara O’Brien is a composer, performer, music educator and music therapist. He has extensive experience composing music for contemporary dance and film and is co-director of Shakram Dance Company. He lectures in Indian music at UCC and works as a music therapist in the area of autism. As both a performer and academic, his specialist area is Indian classical music. He has been studying sitar for thirteen years under various teachers, notably Pandit Kushal Das in Kolkata. He is currently undertaking a PhD at UCC relating to the philosophical and spiritual ideology of Hindustani music.
http://youtu.be/mAoi8YVQGXc

Gráinne McHale, BA Mus, BMus (UCC), MA Community Music (York).
SoundOUT – exploring the role of accessible interactive music technology within inclusive music ensembles in Cork City.

During this presentation I will discuss the evolving the principals and practices of SoundOUT, one of the inclusive music projects that was developed as part of my PhD research at UCC School of Music and Theatre. SoundOUT brings together diverse young people from Cork City, including young people with profound physical disabilities, to make and perform music together within an inclusive environment. Adopting ethnographic research methods, I am examining the role of accessible interactive music technology within these inclusive music ensembles in Cork City. I will discuss how my role as a researcher, musician, practitioner and coordinator have interlinked and supported each other during the development of this SoundOUT project.

Gráinne is a PhD student at UCC School of Music and Theatre and is a recipient of a PhD scholarship from UCC College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences. Her research focuses on examining the role of accessible interactive music technology within inclusive music making and performance ensembles in Cork City.

Breandán de Gallaí (Irish World Academy, University of Limerick)
A choreographic investigation of the expression possibilities of Irish dance

Breandán research looks at the expression possibilities of traditional Irish dance and the challenges associated with presenting work of this nature on contemporary dance stage.

Breandán’s professional dancing career began with Riverdance and spanned 9 years, 7 of those as Principal Dancer. A competitive Irish dancer from an early age, Breandán won a scholarship to study Ballet and Modern dance at the Gus Giordano dance academy in ’87. He was external examiner for the MA in Traditional Irish dance performance at the University of Limerick from ’04 until ’08, after which he completed an MA in Ethnochoreology.

He is currently in his final year of a PhD in Arts Practice. His interest lies in the contemporization of Irish dance and to this end has created “Noċtú” and the “Rite of Spring”. “Noċtú” was nominated for 2 Drama Desk awards (NY), “Outstanding Choreography” and “Unique Theatrical Event”. His second work, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” premiered at the opening of the Fleadh Fringe in August 2012. The outdoor event attacted 14,000 spectators. Breandán is also acting Course coordinator of the Arts Practice PhD programme at the University of Limerick for the autumn semester 2012.

Sydney Freedman (Irish World Academy, University of Limerick)
Title TBA

Sydney Nicoletta Freedman is a performer and student of material from Georgian, Byzantine, and Slavic chaant repertories, and she chantss in several Orthodox Christian communities in Ireland and the United States. She holds a BA in music history and Mediaeval studies from St Olaf College and an MA in ritual chant and song from the University of Limerick, where she is currently engaged in doctoral studies on the theology of singing in Orthodox worship, with a focus on Holy Week and Easter hymnography and on Georgian chant traditions. She is the founder of Ensemble Terirem, an Eastern chant women¹s choir, participates in several other ensembles, teaches at the university, and is carrying out field work in the Svaneti region of Georgia.

Mairead Vaughan (Irish World Academy, University of Limerick)
Imprints in Ink - Imprints in Space

Mairead Vaughan is a choreographer, dance artist and researcher. She graduated from Northern School of Contemporary Dance (UK) with a BA, followed by an MA in Contemporary Dance Performance (IWAMD). She is currently undertaking an Arts Practice PhD in The Academy researching choreographic practice.

Having received Arts Council awards to study yoga and Bharatanatyam in India she co-founded Shakram Dance Company (1999) for which she has since choreographed an eclectic body of multi-disciplinary theatre work with influences ranging from dance video art, film, live sound/voice and site-specific performance. Her choreography is influenced by a variety of world dance forms which she studied in Peru, Ecuador, Malaysia, Borneo and Thailand and has been presented in festivals both nationally and internationally some of which include, Dublin Dance Festival and the Illios Festival, Norway.

Coordinators:
Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin
(Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick)
Dr Helen Phelan
(Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick)
Dr Bernadette Cronin
(School of Music and Theatre, UCC)
Dr Mel Mercier
(School of Music and Theatre, UCC)
Dr Jeffrey Weeter
(School of Music and Theatre, UCC)

Biographies

Nicholas Canny is a Member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council. He was Professor of History at the NUI, Galway, 1979-2009, where he was also Founding Director of the Moore Institute, 2000-11, and Vice President for Research, 2005-8. He was President of the Royal Academy
2008-11. He is a Member of Academia Europaea, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. He has been professeur invité at the École des Hautes Études, Paris, and was Parnell Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, 2005-6. An expert on early modern history broadly defined, he edited the first volume of The Oxford History of the British Empire (1998) and, with Philip D. Morgan, edited The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, c1450-c1850 (2011). His major book is Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (Oxford, 2001), for which he was awarded the Irish Historical Research
Prize 2003; a prize he had previously won in 1976 for his first book The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: a Pattern Established, 1565-76. He gave the Raleigh Lecture for 2011 to the British Academy which has just been published as ‘A Protestant or Catholic Atlantic World? Confessional Divisions and the Writing of Natural History’, Proceedings of the British
Academy, 181, 83-121.

Bernadette Cronin teaches the practice and theory of theatre at University College Cork. She holds a PhD from the University of Exeter (2010) entitled Post-memories of the Holocaust in Contemporary Austrian Theatre: Projects against Forgetting. The dissertation investigates how the subtleties of damage and the inexpressible, the difficult task of claiming the past, can be represented through postdramatic dramaturgies. Other research interests include the theatre of Samuel Beckett, 20th and 21st Century German-language theatre, Feminism and performance, cultural theory and performance, theory and practice of adaptation, and Practice as Research. The latter is carried out in the context of her performance work with Gaitkrash Theatre Company, of which she is a founder member.
This exploratory work takes place at the intersection between sound art and performance. Recent projects include a colloboration with the National Sculpture Factory and the Llanarth Group, Wales (June, 2011): ‘Beckett at the Factory’ – a site-specific, multidisciplinary (theatre, performance art, sound art, sculpture) performance event built around the Beckett short ‘Play’. The current work-in-progress project is a multilingual adaptation of ‘The Maids’ by Jean Genet (Gaitkrash, Llanarth
Group, Theater P’Yut, Korea). She is a founder member of Art|Works – Platform for the Creative Arts and Industries, UCC, and a member of Actors Equity Ireland.


Timothy Emlyn Jones is Dean and Director of Graduate Studies at the Burren School of Art. He is known as a pioneer of drawing as a process of enquiry, having produced many series of vast performative drawings since 1979, exploring themes such as children's scribble as evidence of universal creativity, the existential celebration of emptiness, and the weather as a transformative metaphor for consciousness. These interests led to him pioneering doctoral education in studio art (since 1989). Early exhibitions included The Young Contemporaries (the Arts Council Prize) London Now In Berlin, Documenta, Prospectiva and Kontrapunkt and more recent exhibitions include Beijing, Cheong-ju, Galway, London, Limerick, Paris, Sydney, and Venice. He has been awarded professorships at Wimbledon College of Art, Glasgow School of Art/University of Glasgow, Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, and the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has also been a visiting speaker at Bauhaus Research School, Weimar; CAA, 2003-2011; Cleveland Institute of Art; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; College of Fine Arts at UNSW, ELIA 2002 and 2011; Sydney; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; University of Minnesota; MIT; NCAD, Dublin; Tate Liverpool; and Whitecliffe School of Art, Aukland; and elsewhere. Jones was a student at the Royal College of Art, London and a member of Joseph Beuys' Free International University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1986 and shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing prize in 2001. He has been a member of the European Cultural Parliament since 2011.


Composer, performer, academic and teacher, Mel Mercier is Head of the School of Music and Theatre, University College Cork (UCC), where he teaches Irish, African, Indian & Indonesian musics.

Recent creative projects include: music composition for Colm Toibin’s Testament of Mary (Broadway, NY); Fiona Shaw/Phyllida Lloyd’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Epidaurus, Greece/Old Vic Tunnels, London); the soundscape for Peace Camp, a coastal installation created by Deborah Warner in collaboration with Fiona Shaw (London 2012 Festival); and performances of John Cage’s Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (Cologne/Amsterdam - Cage Centenary).

Mel has performed and collaborated with pianist and composer Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin for over thirty years. Throughout the 1980s he performed in Europe and the USA with John Cage and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (Roaratorio, Inlets, Duets). He has also performed and recorded with many leading Irish traditional musicians and has presented bodhrán and bones workshops in the USA and Europe for more than twenty-five years.

Mel is the co-curator of FUAIM Music at UCC and a co-founder of the Cork-based, intercultural music ensemble TRASNA. He is the Director of the UCC Javanese gamelan Nyai Sekar Madu Sari and the project leader on the Henebry/O’Neill wax cylinder digitization project at UCC.

Musicologist Christopher Morris teaches in the Department of Music and on the MA in Film Studies, UCC. He is author of Modernism and the Cult of Mountains: Music, Opera, Cinema (Ashgate, 2012) and Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Cultural Meaning from Wagner to Berg (Cambridge, 2002) as well as numerous articles, chapters and reviews on opera and film-music topics. Christopher is Research Officer in the Department of Music and Associate Editor of The Opera Quarterly.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is Chair of Music at the University of Limerick and Emeritus Founding Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. In 2012 he was the holder of the O’Donnell Chair of Irish Studies at the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He holds an honorary D.Mus from the National University of Ireland at Cork (UCC) for contributions to Irish music, an Honorary Alumnus award from Boston College for his contribution to Irish music in America, and was appointed the first Ollamh na hÉigse by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann. His many recordings feature him as composer, arranger, performer, and director (frequently with the Irish Chamber Orchestra). He currently is also Chair of Culture Ireland (the Irish governmental body for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide) for a third successive term.

Helen Phelan is Associate Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick and Director of the PhD Arts Practice programme at the Academy.
Her qualifications include undergraduate degrees in Music and German, a teaching diploma and Masters in Education and doctoral work in the area of ritual studies and liturgical music (specialising in Post Vatican II Irish liturgical music). She is the director of the ‘Sanctuary’ initiative which coordinates Higher Education Authority funding for work with the ritual music of the refugee and asylum seeking community in Ireland. She is also director and founder of the Anáil Dé: Breath of God Festival of Sacred World Music. Her publications include Anáil Dé: Breath of God, Music Ritual and Spirituality, which she edited for Veritas Publications in 2001 and from which she also designed a four-part radio documentary.

Jeffrey Weeter composes music, designs real-time video instruments, plays the drums and performs musically with technology. His work was recently performed at the Cork Film Festival. During 2011 and again in 2012, collaborations with electronic musician Kate Simko toured the world touching every continent. He completed his Doctorate in Music Composition from Northwestern University, served five years as an audio engineer for The Oprah Winfrey Show, Harpo Studios, Chicago and is currently a Lecturer in Music Composition at University College Cork, Ireland.

Tuesday 12 February 2013, 2:00 pm - Ó Riada Hall, Music Building, UCC

Workshop: Voice and Percussion

Caitríona O’Leary (voice) and Andrea Piccioni (frame drums Italian, European, Persian, Turkish, Indian and American styles)
Caitríona O’Leary (voice) and Andrea Piccioni (frame drums) will give a short introductory talk on the process that was used to develop the music for Drumsongs, an innovative project based on sean nós singing together with diverse world percussion.
The introduction will be followed by a voice and percussion workshop with participants to demonstrate the process used to develop the Drumsongs project.

Andrea Piccioni (frame drums)

Considered one of the greatest exponents of the art of frame drumming, Andrea Piccioni has developed an extraordinary capacity to move through various musical genres and styles. Through his studies with great Italian, European, Persian, Turkish, Indian and American teachers, he has re-elaborated the language of the tamburello and various frame drums in a truly personal, virtuosic and expressive manner. Andrea holds regular workshops and masterclasses at prestigious festivals in the USA, Ireland, UK, Brasil, Iran, UAE, and Catalunya, and is a resident at the most important frame drums festival worldwide, TAMBURI MUNDI (Freiburg, Germany).
He is president of the Frame Drums Italia association, and Artistic Director of their annual international frame drum festival (FDI).



Caitríona O’Leary (voice)

Caitríona O’Leary is known for her intense and passionate performances of Early Music and Traditional Irish song.

In 2011 she served as music director and starred in eX’s production of Christ Lag in Todes Banden at the Regensburg Early Music Festival. She also performed Ansacht Na Ansacht, a duo-concert of early Irish music with harpist, Andrew Lawrence-King at the Montalbâne International Festival of Medieval Music (Germany), an Irish tour of eX’s acclaimed production of Shipwrecked which culminated in a performance at the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queens. She is featured on a new recording, Emblem, also released in 2011 with frequent collaborator, singer, Clara Sanabras.

Caitríona’s performing activities in 2010 included a national tour of Australia with The Harp Consort, Possessed, a production which she performed in and created for the Galway Early Music Festival, performances as featured soloist in London, Portsmouth, Bristol and Cambridge for Harvey Brough’s Requiem in Blue. She also performed in a concert with University College Cork’s Gamelan Orchestra and toured throughout Ireland (sponsored by the Arts Council), in a concert titled Ecstasy with her band Dúlra.
She is a featured soloist on four upcoming recordings that will be released internationally in 2012 on Heresy Records.

Her two solo CDs (with her band Dúlra), I am Stretched on Your Grave (BMG Classics/DHM) and Dúil, Irish Songs of Love and Nature (EMI/Virgin Classics) were released to rave reviews in 2000, and 2001, and continue to haunt radio playlists in Ireland and abroad.

Thursday 09 February 2012, 5:00 pm - Ó Riada Hall, Music Building, UCC

Seán Ó Riada Memorial Lecture

‘Transforming Carolan’ Sandra Joyce, (IWAMD, UL)
The life and music of the Irish harper/composer Turlough Carolan (1670-1738) have been imagined and re-imagined in many different cultural contexts from the eighteenth century. These imaginings frequently occur through engagement with sources of Carolan's music, as the primary means by which this music has survived. Carolan is often regarded as a transitional figure between the worlds of classical and traditional music, between patrons of different classes
and religions, between the orality of the old Irish harping tradition and literate sources which preserve this tradition.
This lecture highlights the vibrancy and changing performance contexts of Carolan's music as it was transformed in different musical and cultural settings in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reflecting social issues, commodification, audiences, politics and class.

Dr Sandra Joyce is currently Acting Associate Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. She is also Course Director of the MA Irish Traditional Music Performance, having designed this programme, and the BA Irish Music and Dance, with Niall Keegan and Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. Her research interests
include Irish traditional song, the Irish harp, and historical sources of Irish traditional music. She performs regularly as a singer and bodhrán player.

Presented by the Department of Music, the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the Irish Traditional Music Society, UCC.

Admission Free

Friday 11 November 2011, 10:00 am - The Music Building, UCC

SMEI Conference

The Department of Music, UCC, will host the 1st Annual Conference of the Society for Music Education (SMEI) in Ireland on 11-13 November 2011. The keynote address will be delivered by Phil Mullen, Goldsmiths' College, University of London.

The Society for Music Education in Ireland (SMEI) is as an ‘umbrella’ body of individuals, groups and institutions/organizations practicing in various aspects of music education on the island. It provides a forum whereby members can discuss issues of common concern, identify areas of common practice and share information on topics of mutual interest. SMEI engages with other national music and music education organizations, and corresponds with governmental agencies on matters relating to music education advocacy. It is also actively involved in the facilitation of workshops, conferences and showcase events at regional and national levels. It has been a national affiliate of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) since August 2010.

Link to Conference Programme (.doc)
Link to Conference Programme (.pdf)

For further details on conference registration and the call for submissions please click on the following link:
http://conferencing.ucc.ie/conference/conference.php?id=119

Thursday 10 February 2011, 2:00 pm - Ó Riada Hall, Music Building, UCC

Workshop - Jen Shyu

Known mostly for her virtuosic singing with saxophonist/composer Steve Coleman & Five Elements, vocalist/composer/pianist/dancer Jen Shyu presents her groundbreaking solo project “Inner Chapters” -- original songs and improvisations which range from mysteriously dark to sensuously ecstatic for solo voice, piano, dance, er hu, Taiwanese moon lute, and East Timorese lakado. Her sung languages include English, Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Tetum, and Piniyumayan (the language of a Taiwanese indigenous group also known as “Puyuma”), featuring her own lyrics as well as poetry by Brazilian poet Patrícia Magalhães, Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai and Meng Jiao, and text by Cuban slave Esteban Montejo. She also performs traditional and original songs on the two-stringed “gat kim” or moon lute, an authentic Taiwanese instrument, and the lakado, a traditional East Timorese bamboo instrument, both which she has been learning from elders in Taiwan and East Timor.

Biography
Born in Illinois from Taiwanese and East Timorese parents, Jen Shyu, a soloist and bandleader now based in NY, has established herself as a pioneering and original voice in the improvisational, avant-garde jazz and creative music worlds. Shyu has sung a featured role in Anthony Braxton’s pending recording of his opera Trillium E, and has a duo project called Synastry with bassist Mark Dresser, and has also worked with such innovators as Dave Burrell, Pheeroan Aklaff, Ben Monder, and currently records and tours with saxophonist/composer Steve Coleman and Five Elements, singing on his latest albums Harvesting Semblances and Affinities (Pi Recordings 2010) and Lucidarium and Weaving Symbolics (Label Bleu 2005 & 2006). Aside from being a MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in 2008-2009, she has been awarded fellowships from the Asian Cultural Council and the Bronx Council on the Arts, as well as premiered full-length chamber works for voice, ensemble, and dance in collaboration with choreographer Satoshi Haga at Roulette Space in 2008 (Cry of the Nomad) & Jazz Gallery in 2009 (Raging Waters, Red Sands), both supported by the Jerome Foundation. She has performed solo and with her band at such places as Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Stone, and many venues throughout the US, Asia and Europe.
http://www.jenshyu.com
http://www.jenshyu.bandcamp.com
Video feature: http://unartignyc.com/2010/01/18/jen/
Sound samples: http://jenshyu.bandcamp.com/album/inner-chapters
And video clips from solo performances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKKTprRNiy8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXX5nLysVhk
Recent promo of a solo performance in NYC:
http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/music-hub/2010/nov/24/gig-alert-jen-shy
u/

Monday 15 November 2010, 2:00 pm - Ó Riada Hall, Music Building, UCC

Shape Note Workshop

Aldo Thomas Ceresa from New York will give a workshop on Shape Note composition. 2pm - 3:30pm
Aldo Thomas Ceresa:
A dedicated singer and student of the Sacred Harp tradition, Aldo has been writing music in the style of The Sacred Harp since 2005. Among his greatest influences are the works are William Billings, Jeremiah Ingalls, William Walker, J.P. & H.S. Reese, T.J., S.M. & Paine Denson, O.A. Parris, and A.M. Cagle. He has also benefited from the instruction of such living Sacred Harp composers as Richard DeLong, Raymond Hamrick and Judy Hauff; as well as the ongoing dialogue that he has shared with other contemporary Sacred Harp tunewriters, including Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Greg Mulkern, Allison Schofield, Hal Kunkel, and others.
Since 2006, he has been active in his efforts to foster greater community among contemporary tunesmiths; and has organized and participated in several "Composium" Shape Note Tunewriting Workshops in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, Illinois and Alabama. In addition, Aldo also led Sacred Harp tunewriting workshops at both the youth and adult sessions of Camp Fasola in 2009 and 2010; and was the guest composer at the Strathmore Center for the Arts Sacred Harp Singing Workshop in April, 2007. His compositions are also regularly performed by The Art Mob, an a cappella ensemble in New York City.

Wednesday 06 October 2010, 5:00 pm - Glucksman Gallery, UCC

Tangents: The Place of Music

Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Professor William J. Smyth, Dr. Marie-Annick Desplanques
In Tangents: The Place of Music, three distinguished academics respond to the installation From the Sources, currently running at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. Created by Mel Mercier to mark the Centenary of the birth of Aloys Fleischmann, From the Sources draws on Fleischmann’s Sources of Irish Traditional Music for inspiration and its musical materials. The installation contains some 20 hours of footage, capturing 840 performances by 94 traditional musicians (all UCC graduates, tutors, or students), presented in multiple, simultaneous projections to create a collage of images and sounds in the upper gallery of the Glucksman.
In this Tangents event, Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Professor William J. Smyth, and Dr. Marie-Annick Desplanques contribute to an interdisciplinary discussion of historical and contemporary soundscapes. Individual presentations by each of the contributors will be followed by a chaired discussion and Q&A session, moderated by Fiona Kearney, Director of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery.

Admission Free

Tuesday 01 June 2010, 12:00 am - Glucksman Gallery, UCC

From The Sources

From The Sources
In 2010, Ireland celebrates the centenary of the birth of Aloys Fleischmann*. In summer 2010, as part of those celebrations, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, will present an ambitious new work From the Sources, created by composer and UCC lecturer, Mel Mercier*. Based on Fleischmann’s Sources of Irish Traditional Music*, From the Sources will feature filmed performances by almost 100 traditional musicians - all UCC graduates, tutors and students - of the first 986 dance tunes and airs contained in Fleischmann’s monumental work.

Some 20 hours of footage, capturing almost 1000 performances, on all the traditional instruments, will be edited for six simultaneous projections in the Glucksman’s upper gallery to create a John Cage-like audio-visual installation. In addition to the sound art installation created by Mercier for the gallery spaces, an archive of all the recorded performances will be available for
public consultation during the exhibition run.

Taking the compositions of Turlough O’Carolan as a watershed in the history of Irish music, From the Sources will re-animate the pre-modern Irish musical soundscape encoded in the more than 100 music manuscripts published up to that time. Beginning with the first tune in Fleischmann’s collection, ‘The Hay’, and ending with ‘Planxty by Carolan’, From the Sources will create an echo of that soundscape in the Glucksman Gallery, and open the treasure house of Fleischmann’s collection to generations of musicians, listeners and scholars in Ireland and throughout the Irish music world.

Click here for press coverage of From The Sources

For further information and images please contact:
Eileen Kearney, Retail + Communications Manager
T. +353 21 490 1846 F. +353 21 490 1823 E. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

There will be a special programme of live performances, talks, curatorial tours and musical gatherings programmed during the exhibition run.

Curator Matt Packer
Film Editor Chris Hurley
Music Advisor Matt Cranitch
Music Producer Mary Hickson

Project Partners
Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork
School of Music, University College Cork
Cork Film Centre

*Mel Mercier
Mel Mercier is Head of the School of Music, University College Cork where he lectures on Irish, African, Indian and Indonesian music and directs the UCC Javanese gamelan. As a bodhrán and bones player he is best known for his collaboration over twenty-five years with pianist and composer, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. Throughout the 1980s he performed extensively in Europe and the USA with John Cage and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. As a composer he works regularly with theatre director Deborah Warner and actor Fiona Shaw, most recently on Mother Courage and Happy Days at the National Theatre, London. Other recent compositions include Fleischmann in Java (2010) and The Beauty Queen of Affane (2009).

*Aloys Fleischmann
One of the most influential figures in Irish musical life in the twentieth century, Aloys Fleischmann held the Chair of Music at UCC for 46 years, from 1934 to 1980. Born in 1910 in Munich, Fleischmann died in Cork on 21 July 1992. Through his dynamic cultural activism, Fleischmann made a remarkable contribution to the development of the arts in Ireland, especially music. In addition to his work as an educator, academic and composer, Fleischmann founded the Cork Symphony Orchestra in 1934 and conducted it for 56 years; he co-founded the Cork Ballet Company in 1947, and, in 1956, he founded the Cork International Choral Festival and went on to direct it for 33 years. As a teacher, conductor and academic, he has influenced several generations of Irish musicians and music educators.

*Sources of Irish Traditional Music c. 1600—1855
One of Fleischmann’s most significant contributions to Irish music is his monumental Sources of Irish Traditional Music c. 1600—1855, a collection of some 6000 Irish song airs and dance tunes compiled from hundreds of music manuscript sources. The mammoth project of cataloguing the written sources began in the 1950s and occupied the Professor right up until his death in 1992. The Sources of Irish Traditional Music was published posthumously in 1998. In the Preface to the book, Assistant Editor, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin describes Fleischmann as a cartographer who has mapped the course of Irish music over three centuries, and the publication, itself, as ‘a treasure house of information for future research and performance. Fleischmann, too, hoped that the airs and tunes collected in his book, some of which have been lost to the living tradition, would, someday, be re-animated by traditional musicians.
Admission Free

Monday 19 April 2010, 10:00 am - Ó Riada Hall, Music Building, UCC

Bodies/Music Conference

Keynote: Professor Susan McClary (UCLA)

Music is not just a creation of mind or hand, or something only for the ears, contrary to what many have thought and imagined. All who partake in music are doing so within socially constructed situations expectations, and are embodied through it in many different ways. How do these situations work? How precisely are they constructed? Is constructivism a presumption to challenge? Can music disembody, re-embody, re-body? How might music produce raced, gendered and/or queer bodies? What are the listening situations of the 21st century? Where are they? Who is in them and how did they get there? How does this differ from the musicked bodies of earlier history, between traditions? What does a performing or listening body do? Can we not listen (or not hear) when in contact with music? Can the body understand music, or would it want to? Can we (as theorists did for some time) talk of ‘the’ body? Of listening as something shared, or performing as something translatable (for example)?

This conference seeks to address these and other questions from across the range of theoretical perspectives, musical genres, musicological approaches, but we expect a predominance of approaches and practices inflected by 20th and 21st century philosophies and critical theories.

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Wednesday 14 April 2010, 11:00 am - Ó Riada Hall, Music Building, UCC

A Celebration Of The Life and Music Of Aloys Fleischmann

The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (UL) and the School of Music (UCC) present a one-day seminar celebrating the life and work of Aloys Fleischmann.
Introduction: Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin
Panel discussions:
i Fleischmann: A Life
ii Composing Ireland: Aloys Fleischmann, Music and Identity
iii The Sources of Irish Traditional Music – Finding the Key
A concert of new music composed by staff and students of the School of Music (UCC) in memory of Fleischmann.
The Fleischmann Piano Suite - performed by Dearbhla Collins.

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Friday 06 March 2009, 5:00 pm - Aula Maxima, UCC

Cork Early Music

Directed by Deborah Roberts (with Alison Crum and Roy Marks):
A course for viols, recorders, lutes, baroque violins and solo/consort singers - on English consort music. Fri 6th March- Sunday 8th March 2009
For more information and apllication details please see:
http://www.trioramusica.com/cork.htm
Course fee:€120(€80 students)