Hayes, Roe

NCH Kevin Barry Room, Dublin

Tom Johnson – Bedtime Stories (as Gaeilge). Christopher Norby – 5 Miniatures for bass clarinet. Paul Roe – The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy.

It can’t be said of many concerts that they’re short and sweet. Tuesday’s NewSoundWorlds programme from actor Nuala Hayes and clarinettist Paul Roe was more than that. It was short and sweet and sharp. And part of it was in Irish, to boot.

Tom Johnson’s

Bedtime Stories

were premièred in 1985 by the Australian Broadcasting Company and later taken up by radio stations in Germany and France. The radio productions incorporated sound effects, in one case a recording of the composer’s snoring. But the stories have also been performed in concert, and can be managed by a single performer, as the music for clarinet and the words don’t actually overlap.

There are 12 stories in all, straightforward but droll, from pillow talk to seating arrangements at a dinner party, from choosing material for a dress to watching the stock market falling and rising.

Johnson likes simple, open, musical declarations, and elements of each of his stories – the seating order, the colours of the material, the stock market movements – allow him to link words and music in direct and often witty ways. Nuala Hayes’ telling of the stories in Ray Yeates’ translations was nicely modulated and well judged. The translation even managed to better the original at one point, the permutations of “fear-ban-fear-ban” having more of a snap than those of “man-woman-man- woman”. And Roe’s playing struck the right balance between the straight and the quizzical.

Johnson wrote his own text, and the words and the music are bound up with each other in a totality that’s more than the sum of its parts. Derry com- poser Christopher Norby’s Miniatures (for bass clarinet) and Roe’s

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy

(for clarinet) set self-standing, fantastical texts by film director Tim Burton.

Both works suffered by being placed after the Johnson, where they tended to sound musically profligate by comparison. Both also yielded primacy to the words in spite of Norby’s writing being the most resourceful and elaborate of the evening. Roe’s simpler approach was more illustratively focused.