Earth Sonnet
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
★★★★☆
With a nod to the cosmic and an ear to the ground, Mel Mercier introduces his latest work in the fitting setting of the library of the geophysics section of Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Rooting it in a space where seismic instruments monitor our planet’s long-wave vibrations underscores the raison d’etre of his Earth Sonnet song cycle: “a retuning of our relationship with the earth at this time of climate crisis”.
Having commissioned a sonnet each from the seven Irish poets Jane Clarke, John FitzGerald, Kayssie K, Aifric Mac Aodha, Paul Muldoon, Gerry Murphy and Simon Ó Faoláin, and with recorded vocals by Conor Lovett, Kayssie K and Cara Cullen, Mercier has created a vast soundscape that invites the audience to consider our part in what may become our self-immolation.
Mercier is an integral part of this 10-piece ensemble. The actor Mikel Murfi brings his kinetic energy to bear on two of the sonnets, miming with pinprick precision to the recorded narrations and shape-shifting through the room with such fleet-footed ease that he draws the audience into his every tiptoed step, darting glance and witty bodily contortion.
The singer Iarla Ó Lionáird is no stranger to newly composed music that stretches and bends all preconceptions of genre; he infuses Murphy’s sonnet, Monard Midsummer, with a wistful, plaintive tone shot through with spare keyboard lines from Greg Felton and gamelan by Kelly Boyle and Mel Mercier, later harmonising with the singer Óscar Mascareňas.
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Caoimhe Ní Fhlatharta brings a smoky vocal quality to this deeply immersive soundbath, her unadorned singing style a perfect foil for the disquiet at the heart of these earth sonnets. Dylan Gully’s clarinet is an essential scaffold throughout too. Sung in English, Irish and Shona, their linguistic variations add further to the urgent sense of time and place that binds performer and audience together.
Mónckk, Mercier’s fine-boned seven-piece ensemble, imbue the work with an otherworldly quality, soothing, flailing and questioning, with a recurring sense of uaigneas, or loneliness, that leaves the audience with much to mull over long after the performance has ended.
Continues at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Saturday, September 14th
