Sligo Contemporary Music Festival

Roger Doyle and Raymond Deane are very different types of composer

Roger Doyle and Raymond Deane are very different types of composer. Those differences were highlighted in the Sligo Contemporary Music Festival, which ran from Friday night to yesterday afternoon in the Blue Raincoat Theatre. The differences evident in the composers' music were explicated by the discussion which closed the festival.

Raymond Deane spoke of how he produced material and worked it. For many years he had resisted pre-ordered schemes, preferring each piece to develop an appropriate internal process. That was evident in the festival's opening concert, devoted to seven works written by Deane between 1973 and 1998. They are disciplined, often rich in allusion, metaphor and quotation, and there is the occasional touch of irreverence. All this can make fascinating, provocative listening.

The performances by the London-based group Topologies were, by some margin, the most persuasive I have heard of this composer's music. The three movements of Par thenia violata (1998), which was receiving its premiere, hold tightly to a sometimes compliant, sometimes independent discourse between violin and piano. We also heard the first complete performance of Macabre Trilogy (1993-96).

Scored for various combinations of violin, cello, clarinet, piano and percussion, Marcheoublie, Catacombs and Sea changes (Danse macabre) are concerned with various responses to death. Seachanges (Danse macabre) joins in the universal attempt to have the last laugh. In Catacombs, Deane's distorting references to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition seem to epitomise his attitude to the past - a highly individual mix of homage and iconoclasm.

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If Deane affirms the present partly through reinterpreting the past, Roger Doyle does so by pillaging anything that might suit his purpose. And he does so with complete humanity and respect. He was disarming when justifying his penchant for composing in "hundreds of different styles". But is he creating individual worlds as a true post-modernist, or is he just profligate? After years of listening, I am still not sure.

The concert devoted to Doyle was given by Crash Ensemble, the composer (piano and drum), Raymond Deane (piano), plus the sean nos singer Sarah Grelish and the piper Brian O hUiginn. Under the Green Time and Trad Arr mix live and electronic sounds, using the characteristics of Irish instruments. The performances were impressive. Yet I found these straightforward evocations less absorbing than the excerpts from Doyle's massive multi-media work, Babel.

Additive procedures were heard in Crash Ensemble's concert on Saturday, in Maria Ryan's Effervescence. It was a pity that the premiere of this three-movement piece for live and recorded sound, plus video by Noelle Noonan, suffered from technical glitches.

The festival included the launching of the new Black Box recordings of music by Irish composers John Buckley, Grainne Mulvey, Deirdre Gribbin and Frank Corcoran. Stephen Montague's lecture on how to earn a living as a composer contained nuggets of pragmatic wisdom. His genial manner and witticisms in both the lecture and the speeches associated with the New Music for Sligo/IMRO Composers' Competition (he was the adjudicator) helped to set the tone for the weekend.

Grainne Mulvey won the competition's Irish section with Maelstrom. A string quartet of experienced chamber musicians gave an effective performance of a work I wish to hear again.

The organisation of the competition lacks grip. A lot of time was wasted in the open rehearsal of Maelstrom and the winning piece in the international section was not played, due to the non-appearance of one player. This piece was Creole by, it's good to report, another Irish composer, Robert Canning. It and other recent competition winners will appear in a touring programme next spring. Glitches apart, this was a busy and worthwhile weekend.