Contemporary music ensemble Concorde present the third event in the 2013 series
Up Close with Music at the RHA Gallery, Ely Place on Sunday afternoon 24 March.
Each concert offers listeners the chance to hear newly commissioned pieces from
Irish composers alongside international repertoire and to meet with composers and
performers during the interval.

• Featured composer in the March programme is Frank Lyons, Director of Arts
& Humanities Research Institute, School of Creative Arts, University of
Ulster. His commissioned work is a duo for bass clarinet and accordion –
Thud, which he describes as having a quality of ‘understated lyricism with
occasional emotive bursts of virtuosic activity’. This work will be performed
twice.

• Concorde are pleased to introduce their selected Up Close Student Performer
for 2013, Gavin Brennan, saxophonist and student at DIT Conservatory of
Music & Drama. Gavin will perform two pieces – the evocative ‘Nightbird’
by Karen Tanaka for saxophone and tape and an atmospheric duo with cello
by Greek composer Astasia Nasopoulou who is now based in Amsterdam.

• Concorde have also invited Iulian Pusca, a post-graduate student at DIT
Conservatory of Music & Drama, to join them. Iulian will play panpipes in a
duo, Bird, by Dutch composer Gerard Beljon, with guitarist John Feeley.
Beljon gives this advice to the two performers in this work: ‘it is important
that both panpipes and guitar think of themselves as birds’!

• Latvian composer Anna Veismane will be attending for the first performance
of two pieces for cello and guitar, Hidden Dragons & A Response. She has
won many awards and has had performances with the Latvian National
Symphony Orchestra and the North/South Chamber Orchestra in New York,
among others.

• The international programme also includes a trio by Finnish composer, Riikka
Talvitie – Bit by Bit, from 2004, which has been selected from Concorde’s
extensive repertoire.

The programme is presented in two parts, at 2.30 pm and 3.45 pm, and listeners are
invited to join for either or both performances.