Lost in a labyrinth of words and music

Children all too rarely get a chance to compose music, or perform in opera. Cue Waterford New Music Week, writes Arminta Wallace

'If you think about the education system in Ireland at the moment," says Eric Sweeney, "children all paint pictures at school, and they all write essays. But no one ever says to them, 'You can compose music'. Children have a huge capability and inventiveness, which comes out in art and in writing but is rarely tapped in music - and that's what we're very keen to do."

One thing you can say for sure: Waterford New Music Week 2007 will be a week of new music. After that, though, just about anything may happen. And just about everybody will get in on the act, from primary school kids through graduate students to professional performers and composers. The pianist Finghin Collins will give a lunchtime concert at the Good Shepherd Chapel on College Street next Tuesday, and there'll be a jazz gig with Ronan Guilfoyle at the Book Centre on Wednesday. There'll be improvisation and masterclasses, open rehearsals and a choral coffee morning.

The message, according to Sweeney, head of music at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) - which, along with Garter Lane Arts Centre, orchestrates the seven-day series of recitals, masterclasses and musical mayhem - is that new music rocks.

Music graduates from WIT have been working with children in four local schools for two months, producing original compositions based on Cathy Berberian's piece, Stripsody. Written in comic-strip format rather than traditional musical notation, this piece for solo voice has proved a fertile starting point for young musical imaginations. "The fifth classes from Mullinavat and St Saviour's primary schools have decided on the theme of 'animals in the jungle'," says one of the project's facilitators, Cathy Purcell. "We're trying to convey all the different sounds through music, using scrapers, drums and a walking bass."

Her young charges particularly enjoy being birds, she says, "probably because they get to run around around the place". The jungle chorus also features elephants, frogs, rain and thunder, and a cricket. "Oh, and snakes."

Transition year students from Our Lady's, New Ross, and Waterford De La Salle, meanwhile, have interpreted Stripsody's score in a slightly different way. "The original piece depicts a radio sound man trying to tune in different stations," explains Purcell. "We're working on the idea that each station represents a different culture. We have Buddhist chant at the start, then African drumming, then Japanese and Chinese themes and then they all come together when he tunes in properly. At least, that's the theory - whether it will work or not, we'll have to see."

THE CHILDREN'S COMPOSITIONS will be unveiled at Composers of Tomorrow! on Tuesday evening. "I wish I'd done something like this when I was in school," says Purcell. "It's great to get a child out there, whether they're getting up in front of an audience and performing, or just experimenting with different sounds."

The theme of New Music Week 2007 is music theatre for children, and one of the major centrepieces of the week will be three performances, at Garter Lane Arts Centre, of the children's opera Lily's Labyrinth. First commissioned by WIT in 2003, this new staging - funded by a €50,000 Opera Production Award from the Arts Council - will feature a children's choir, a junior string orchestra from WIT, the Welsh new music group PM Ensemble, and singers Deboragh Abbott and Nyle Wolfe in the central roles. It will be conducted by Robert Houlihan and directed by Brian Flynn.

"An hour of constant activity" is how composer Marian Ingoldsby describes the opera. The libretto - by Ben Hennessy of Red Kettle - finds the eponymous bookworm, Lily, meeting a boy who can't read, and introducing him to the world of books.

"Lily's Labyrinth has lots of stories which the kids can act out, and there's a Minotaur dance which - well, my music doesn't ever really go mad, but it's very pulsating and rhythmic," Ingoldsby says. "A lot of people feel contemporary opera is not for children, but they're really getting into it, and although I've given them some quite demanding things to do, they're managing very well."

For a composer, she adds, it's particularly thrilling when a piece gets a new lease of life in this way. "It's one thing to get a commission. But then the piece is done, and very often it just goes away. I think I'd be speaking for a lot of composers in that respect. Unless you're very lucky, you don't often have more than one performance of new pieces. So this is a marvellous opportunity to do it again - and get a whole new crowd of people involved."

New pieces galore will be in evidence on Friday 9th, when fourth-year students at WIT present their latest compositions at an all-day "music salon".

"Most of us use laptops equipped with Sibelius computer software, which allows you to play back what you've written and gives you an idea what it sounds like," says student Catriona Tynan. "But this will be the first time we'll have heard our music played by real people." Her piece, Pendulum, is based around the idea of time and is scored for piano and glockenspiel. It will be performed by WIT lecturer and harpsichordist Malcolm Proud.

"Everybody helps everybody else out for the week, which is good crack," Tynan says. "And you've got lecturers practising with students - so we get to tell them what to do, for a change." Though she is planning to major in opera and hopes to make a career as a singer, Tynan says that studying at WIT has broadened her musical horizons to a huge degree. "One day I could be listening to musicals, the next to boy bands," she says. "I'm totally and utterly besotted by Satie. I love Chopin, too. And I listen to contemporary Irish composers all the time. But I still listen to the Killers and Razorlight and stuff like that."

SPEAKING OF CONTEMPORARY Irish composers, on Thursday February 8th there'll be a lunchtime recital of new works by Eric Sweeney, described by the composer as "a sort of shop window of stuff I've done over the last year or so." It includes no fewer than three Sweeney premieres: Ritual Dance; a new version for multiple keyboards of Granard, commissioned last year by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra; and the first Irish performance of The Wilderness, for four keyboards, flute, clarinet and violin.

But Sweeney insists that the WIT course in general, and New Music Week in particular, isn't about notching up premieres. It's about versatile musicians and lively musical dialogue. "At WIT we're interested in producing music graduates with a wide range of skills," he says. "We have students from all musical disciplines - classical, traditional, jazz and popular music. They all study improvisation, and they all study composition. The model we use is that of the 18th-century Kapellmeister.

"Think of Bach: he was an organist, conductor, and composer, as well as a teacher and music administrator. Even if they're not going to be composers with a capital 'c', many of these students will go on to teach, or work with community music groups, or they may be involved with arranging music for school orchestras and choirs. We encourage them to develop their own voices and express their own ideas. It's a whole continuum of creativity."

Waterford New Music Week 2007 runs from next Sunday to Saturday February 10th. Admission to daytime events is free and no booking is necessary. www.waterfordnewmusicweek.com