Inappropriate Moments

Friday 8th and Saturday 9th July

A two-day presentation of the ground-breaking music of Jennifer Walshe by the radical text and music partnership, Béal at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre.

The works will be performed by ensembÉal, a group of the finest choral singers in Ireland, directed by Elizabeth Hilliard. The composer will also bring her compelling live performance to the festival. Eight ensemble works will be presented, including several Irish premieres and a world premiere.

Friday 8th July 2016

FREE POP-UP PERFORMANCES 
Venue: Public areas of the Project Arts Centre
3:30pm A Folksong Collection
3:50pm The Soft Menagerie
4:10pm Julian & Kanye
4:30pm A Folksong Collection Vol. 2 (World Premiere)
4:50pm PADDY REILLY RUNS WITH THE DEVIL

CONCERT 
Venue: Space Upstairs at the Project Arts Centre
Tickets: €10 to €15
8:00pm he wants his cowboys to sound like how he thinks cowboys should sound
Zusammen ii
interval
WATCHED OVER LOVINGLY BY SILENT MACHINES

Saturday 9th July 2016

FREE POP-UP PERFORMANCES 
Venue: Public areas of the Project Arts Centre
2:00pm Volunteer Chorus (featuing Tonnta Music)
3:30pm A Folksong Collection
3:50pm The Soft Menageri
4:10pm Julian & Kanye
4:30pm A Folksong Collection Vol. 2
4:50pm PADDY REILLY RUNS WITH THE DEVIL

CONCERT 
Venue: Space Upstairs at the Project Arts Centre
Tickets: €10 to €15
8:00pm The White Noisery
solo set by Jennifer Walshe
Duration and its simple modes

Tickets for the evening concerts are available from the Project Arts Centre:

Web: http://projectartscentre.ie/event/inappropriate-moments/
Tel: (01) 8819 613 
Email: box-office [at] projectartscentre.ie
Box office opening hours are Monday to Saturday, 11am - 7pm.

Kindly supported by an Arts Council Music Project Award

ABOUT INAPPROPRIATE MOMENTS
Walshe has redefined what vocal-ensemble music can be. She has gained an international reputation as a radical musical thinker, but one not stuck in an ivory tower. Her work displays a fascination with the parallels between the discipline of classical music and that of other human activity patterns. A broad range of topics, not usually considered fitting to the classical music world (eg. games, sign language, pop references, telepathic messaging) are incorporated wholesale into her work.

In these densely-worked studies of marginalia, the super-extreme and the banal mingle uneasily; Walshe takes all the tension and awkwardness that classical musicians train for years to expunge from their practice, and puts it right back in. Rhythms of nervous distraction form a silent counterpoint to the audible. The scores proceed with methodical deliberateness; material of all types is neutrally juxtaposed in blocks. Alongside the theatrical madness there is an intangible core of poise and even-handed balance.

The experience of the festival will be unified by Walshe’s incendiary solo performances. Another constant running through the programme is Karaoke, perhaps as a comment on our culture of uneasy imitation.

There can be an almost unbearable sense of overwhelming menace and foreboding, bringing to mind J.G.Ballard’s comment about ‘a planetary suburbia, a future of utter boredom, lit by totally unpredictable acts of violence’. Co-existing with this, there is a curiously meditative and calming tinge to these works, a puzzled apprehension of the strangeness of the world we find ourselves in.

ABOUT BÉAL
Béal is a production company committed to exploring the relationship between the spoken and sung word, and presenting in performance the manifold ways in which music and text can interact. It is based in Dublin and is directed by David Bremner and Elizabeth Hilliard. Béal’s mission results from a fascination with the capacity of words to be both pure sound and a means of communication, and a desire to share this.

We present work by a diverse range of living composers and poets. Our first venture was a critically-acclaimed festival in 2010. In January 2012 we produced two song recitals featuring newly-commissioned work. Our successful festival in November 2012 featured a mixture of Irish and international work, including a performance by renowned American baritone

Thomas Buckner of a Robert Ashley European premiere, and three new commissions: works by Ailís Ní Ríain, Tom Johnson, and an innovative work of polyphonic poetry by Billy Mills. We have built an audience that is interested in the cross-fertilisation of music and text and have successfully mounted the premieres of over 20 new Irish works