Cellist Kate Ellis, Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble, introduces a series of unique collaborations between Ireland's leading new music ensemble and a quartet of singular performers, set to take place at the MusicTown festival,coming this July at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.
At the end of last year, Leagues O’Toole of Foggy Notions approached us to see if we were interested in a collaborations project for MusicTown.
We went away and made a long list of dream collaborators. Artists that we love and admire, artists that we had worked with before and those we have always wanted to work with.
We combined our ideas and landed on a brilliant final lineup of collaborators: Rachael Lavelle, E the Artist, Elaine Howley and Mohammad Syfkhan.
Collaboration is at the heart of Crash Ensemble. It provides us with the freedom to explore our sound world and enrich the musical landscape with fresh ideas. For each collaboration, we carefully create detailed maps for the ensemble, which serve as canvases where we can paint vibrant scenery around the unique work of each of our four collaborators.
These maps are versatile tools that help musicians navigate and interpret a piece of music, particularly in collaborative and experimental settings. They provide a framework that supports creativity and ensures coherence in the performance.
Crash collaborate with an array of music makers, visual artists, filmmakers and performance artists making new work by commissioning, exploring, investigating and experimenting.
Collaborating inspires us to be creative, experiment, and be adventurous in what we do.
A few years ago we commissioned Rachael Lavelle to write a piece for Crash as part of our [REACTIONS] series - she is a brilliant songwriter and one of the most unique artists I’ve heard.
Barry O Halpin, one of Crash Ensemble’s guitarists and a brilliant composer in his own right, has been entrusted to make maps for the ensemble. He has taken a deep dive into Rachael’s music and created beautiful colorful scores for us to play along with a new song or two.
Listen: Rachael Lavelle - This Is The Space Between Your Hand and Mine
E The Artist is a Yoruba - Irish sound and visual artist from Dublin. His musical works interrogate and reimagine contemporary and past African diasporic sounds. He's creating new music for this project - focusing on a retrospective of the music generated from the Chicago Footwork scene of the 1990’s, and taking the essence of dance music & adding polyrhythmic aspects which we will play alongside some beautiful visuals from Glitter Fingers.
Cork-based artist Elaine Howley is someone who I’ve admired for a long time. We met for the first time at the Sounds From A Safe Harbour residency last year and bonded over a delicious meal one night. Elaine has a duo named HowlBux with Irene Buckley, who composes music for all sorts of classical contemporary music groups.
Irene has taken Elaine’s music and made the most beautiful scores for us to play with. This show will also have a stunning set design, by Elaine Moore of Morgantown Flowers.
Kurdish Syrian singer Mohammad Syfkhan is a genuine artist. He’s a great character and a brilliant musician. Leonie Bluett, Crash’s clarinetist, has transcribed the melodies of Mohammad’s music and that’s been passed over to saxophonist Cathal Roche who has added harmony and filled in some of the landscape as a starting point for us to play.
Crash Ensemble play with Rachael Lavelle, Mohammad Syfkhan, Elaine Howley & E the Artist performing over 2 nights as part of this year’s MusicTown festival taking place at the NCH, Dublin, on the 20th and 21st July - find out more here.
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