Topographies

May 25 @ 13:00

Topographies

Presented by Contemporary Music Centre Ireland in collaboration with Artistic Director Francis Heery and PAS Berlin, Topographies connects Irish artists with some of the best international improvisers on the Berlin scene today.
Bringing together improvised and composed works, the programme includes three specially commissioned works by Irish composers that draw on geographical and psychological landscapes.

—- Friday 24 May —- 18:00 Topographies Festival Opening

All are welcome to celebrate the start of the festival before the first performance at 8pm. Reception kindly sponsored by the Irish Embassy in Germany.

20:00 MoonPhases (2017/2022, Francis Heery)

MoonPhases is a long spectral work written as a tribute to WB Yeats’ occult work A Vision. This book grew out of notes he took during daily séance-like sessions with his wife Georgie, who transmitted messages from the beyond, either through speech or automatic writing. MoonPhases features a ‘hermetically charged’ drone and performance instructions on 28 cards.

—- Saturday 25 May —-

13:00 Inferno (2021, Elliot Murphy)Inferno is a work for solo cello and interactive pre-recorded strings written to mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It follows Dante’s journey as he descends into the underworld, marking each new location with a soundscape. Its modular composition allows the pre-recorded aleatoric voices to be flexibly recomposed during performance, while simultaneously improvising the live cello part. Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.

15:00’…and if these were islands…’

A long improvisation featuring various constellations and clusters of improvising musicians from Ireland and Berlin.

19:00 Uncharted
Panel discussion with artists and composers from Topographies, in conversation with Jonathan Grimes from the ContemporaryMusic Centre. The conversation will be recorded for CMC Ireland’s special new music podcast Amplify.

20:00 Topographies Triptych

Three world premieres for piano, electric guitar, cello and electronics by Francis Heery, Ellen King and Elliot Murphy, written especially for the Topographies Festival.

Festival artists
Dan Bodwell: double bass
John Godfrey: electric guitar
Francis Heery: electronics/composer
Brad Henkel: trumpet
Jung-Jae Kim: saxophone
Izumi Kimura: piano
Ellen King: electronics/composer
Malwina Kołodziejczyk: saxophone
Vincent Laju: cello
Shane Latimer: electric guitar
Elo Masing: violin
Elliot Murphy: cello/composer
Ernst Surberg: synth