Music has been at the heart of the University of Limerick (UL) ever since the arrival of the force of nature that was Micheál Ó Suilleabháin, visionary founder of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in 1994. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the university, and among its many celebrations, both academic and artistic, is a gala concert on November 24th. Titled Sounding Sionna, it will showcase the outstanding performers and musicians who make UL their home and who visit from far and near.
Sounding Sionna is a highly ambitious concept curated and produced by Eoin Brady, formerly a producer of such shows as Blue of the Night on Lyric FM and now internal communications manager at UL. Brady is a man who doesn’t deal in half measures, unsurprisingly, given his early introduction to the effervescence that the late Micheál Ó Suilleabháin brought to the nascent Irish world academy.
“I worked for Lyric FM for 21 years and what started me off in radio was an interview that I did with Micheál when I was just a callow student,” says Brady. “And a lot of what he spoke to me about then, resonates with me now: tradition is a living thing. It needs to be absorbing new influences while also being aware of where it’s coming from. I remember asking him about regional styles in bowing and in fiddling and dancing and whether there was a danger that these disappear and he said no, if they’re strong enough they’ll stay, but they’ll absorb influences, and change, and that’s good. Because they’re a living thing, and no one or nothing should stagnate.”
Brady brought a keen production sensibility to his current role in UL and past and future segue seamlessly in this current project, where he finds himself still immersed in production.
“When I joined UL, one of the things that excited me was the amazing range of music here”, says Brady. “We have a world-class professional orchestra here on campus [the Irish Chamber Orchestra], we have astonishing artists in residence coming on campus, and every day you walk across the Living Bridge and past the academy, you hear pipes or fiddle or dancing. And they’re playing with international artists and tutors, so in planning for the 50th anniversary, we really wanted to have a concert that showcases how fantastic this all is.”
Rhiannon Giddens is artist in residence at the Irish world academy. A renaissance woman, she’s recently been appointed director of the Silk Road Ensemble. As well as enjoying a thriving career as a banjo and fiddle player and singer, her duo albums with Francesco Turrisi sit alongside her spellbinding collaboration on Songs of our Native Daughters and a highly engaging series for the BBC World Service, on the role of black musicians in American folk and bluegrass music. This calibre of musician in residence is an indicator of just how high the bar is in the Irish world academy, and it’s one that Brady is ensuring remains so, as he plots this concert down to its finest detail. Melding traditional and classical worlds of music with contemporary dance is at the heart of this ambitious endeavour.
I am keenly aware of just how close baroque music is to traditional music from my time working in Lyric FM
— Eoin Brady
“This concert will feature the two major musical muscles in UL,” says Brady. “I am keenly aware of just how close baroque music is to traditional music from my time working in Lyric FM. There’s a really strong improvisatory element to both. Baroque music is more formal of course than traditional music, but there’s a really big improvisatory element. And of course, this has echoes in what we know about the love Carolan had for the music of Geminiani [17th-century Italian composer and violinist].
Another collaboration at the heart of the forthcoming concert involves the Irish Concert Orchestra (ICO) and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh on their album Róisín Reimagined.
“The fact that the ICO have released the Róisín Reimagined album is to me reflective of the fact that there seems to be a bit of a trend among classical musicians and players to not see their tradition either as completely fixed in aspic, but as something that can be played with a little bit more, in a respectful sense, but not a po-faced sense.”
For this concert, UL has also co-commissioned with Lyric FM a new piece from composer Patrick Cassidy.
“Patrick is an alumnus of the university in mathematics,” says Brady “And because of his background in writing for film, I knew that he would think about the audience and also about the performers. I found Beatha an Scoláire in Thomas Kinsella’s book, An Duanaire: 1600 — 1900 Poems of the dispossessed.
Sweet is the scholar’s life
busy about his studies;
the sweetest lot in Ireland
as all of you know well
No king or prince to rule him
nor lord however mighty;
no rent to the chapter house
no drudging, no dawn-rising
….
His horse-team hale and hearty
at the first coming of Spring;
the harrow for his team
is a fistful of pens.
“I really liked the idea of Patrick, the 21st-century Hollywood composer, looking back to a 17th-century anonymous poem that talks about the glories of the scholar’s life in Ireland. And to me it connects everything full circle. It connects with the well of the tradition. It connects with where we are going and it connects the university which is only 50 years old with that tradition of learning.”
The theme of the University of Limerick’s 50th anniversary is one of Reflecting, Connecting and Transforming. Donegal dancer, choreographer, academic and former lead dancer with Riverdance Breandán de Gallaí has taken the essence of that to the heart of his contribution to the concert: a dance piece based on a Vivaldi aria, Vedro con mio diletto, which will feature sean nós singers, medieval and baroque song with traditional dance. Essentially, he sees it as celebrating all the music and dance cultures of the world equally.
“What I want to do is honour all traditions that are available here at the Irish world academy,” says de Gallaí. “From the classical strings to the traditional music, traditional and contemporary dance — and chant. I’m taking a Vivaldi aria that I had already set some Irish dance to, that really plays with the aesthetic and moves away from some of the things we value, such as virtuosity and speed. Doing that, it then started to have much more of a juicy, lazy feel about it, responding very much to that baroque music. I have the classical string ensemble, with Irish dancers and I wanted to marry the music, so the next step was to replace the singer with a sean nós singer, who’s Dominic Mac Giolla Bhríde. He’s an Oireachtas and Corn Uí Riada winner, and who’s also very musically literate. He’s also from Donegal. I’ve heard an early version of it and I think it’s phenomenal. There are parallels between the very ornate baroque singing style and what happens in sean nós, because he’s very well versed in Irish culture.”
What I’m working towards is bringing a visual polyphony with contemporary dancers who use much more floor
— Breandán de Gallaí
De Gallaí's love of Vivaldi dates back to an earlier work of his titled Lïnger, which explored the relationship between ageing and sexuality.
“This aria just inspired me,” he says. “And it seemed right because it had potential to be explored from the different musical and dance disciplines or genres. By unpacking it, I kept finding resonances for those disciplines.”
Having studied modern dance in Chicago, de Gallaí is right at home marrying the dense rhythms of Irish traditional dance with unlikely external influences that cross time and space with remarkable ease.
“I got to spend quite some time with Micheál Ó Suilleabháin,” he says. “And I thought he was visionary. It was all about the poetic and the practical, and parity of esteem: about all the disciplines being of equal importance. And while that’s something that we all know, sometimes there is a privileging of the western concert arts, and I just happen to be incredibly enthusiastic about all of them. At the end of the day, what I’m working towards is bringing a visual polyphony with contemporary dancers who use much more floor. These things rarely co-exist, so that’s a huge thing for me, because I think there’s more that unites us than separates us, and that’s a big message that I want to get through with this piece.”
- Sounding Sionna: A celebration of music and dance at UL. November 24th 7.30pm €25 uch.ie
