Michelle O’Rourke of Ergodos Voices

Ergodos Voices
Dubin, 5 Dec – A new work by the Irish composer Seán Clancy looks at our perceptions of madness as well as our voyeuristic celebrity culture. The work, Comedias Nuevas, is premiered by Ergodos Voices, a new all-amplified, all-femaie quartet. www.ergodos.ie

Snakes and Ladders
New York, 8 Jan – Last year’s Snakes and Ladders festival at the World Financial Center Winter Garden ‘[filled] the giant interior with equally enormous house-tinged beats, improvisatory experimental music, and amped-up electroacoustic compositions’ (see The Journal of Music, May/June 2008). This time the festival, curated by Daniel Figgis, focuses more on music and video. www.danielfiggis.com

Celtic Connections
Glasgow, 14–31 Jan – Opening the 2010 Celtic Connections festival is Jim Sutherland’s True North Orchestra, an ensemble comprising roughly 50:50 traditional musicians au fait with classical disciplines, and orchestral players similarly versed in traditional music. They’ll perform excerpts from Sutherland’s score to Aisling’s Children. Another highlight over the packed seventeen days is the extraordinary Imagined Village, featuring the vocal front-line of Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy and Chris Wood. www.celticconnections.com

Crash Unplugged
By the fireside in Dublin, 11 Dec – Unplugged, atmospheric, fire and candles lit in the front room of an old Georgian house, the Crash Ensemble will be performing Extended Play, a new work by Christopher Fox (see his article on p. 22), as well as works by Sciarrino, Shatter by Australian composer Smetanin and Gerald Barry’s singing string quartet, First Sorrow. www.crashensemble.com

Midem
Cannes, 23–27 Jan – ‘We’re going to hire a “chief listener.” We have had hundreds of applications for this position. This is somebody who acts like an air-traffic controller… And all you gotta do is sit there and listen.’  Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer of Eastman Kodak isn’t discussing music – he’s talking about social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and he’ll be speaking at the Midemnet Conference, From Content to Context – Monetising the New Music Experience, with Peter Gelb of the Metropolitan Opera. www.midem.com

What is it?
Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, 12–19 Dec – The Australian festival What is Music? issued an open call for 50/50, an event that strings together fifty different artists across fifty minutes, seemingly doing whatever they want. In the festival’s own words, is is ‘a project of absurd and amusing magnitude’. www.whatismusic.com