At the Darmstadt Summer Course, 2023, six Irish people are attending. One tutor, one performer and four participants, including myself, making up about 1.5% of the 400-odd people at the course. As I look around at all the amazing musicians, composers and thinkers, it makes me wonder where Ireland stands on the international new music stage, and it gives me hope that we are here, and holding our own. It does, however, make me wonder about the health of our new music scene, and how we continue to foster new members of our community. How do we cultivate a fertile space for them to grow and flourish? And how do we let people who haven’t found these spaces in?
Festivals and integration into larger events?
In Ireland, there are two dedicated new music festivals, New Music Dublin, and Music Current, both based in Dublin. Music Current is a more specialised festival focusing on electronic music, and New Music Dublin is a broader festival looking at new music in Ireland and abroad. Other snatches of new music can be heard at the Louth Contemporary Music Society’s summer festival, at Kilkenny Arts Festival, and at Finding a Voice, Clonmel. These all give a flavour of some of the new music happening in Ireland, but New Music Dublin and Music Current are the premium places to hear this music.
Other festivals do have the occasional concert featuring new music in their programme, or have a competition to have a new piece performed, but these tend to be minor affairs in addition to the main attractions. The festivals mentioned above are flag bearers of new music in Ireland, creating some of the most visible outputs,for what can be otherwise difficult to find music.
Ensembles?
There are a few ensembles and small organisations that truly do the donkey’s work for the entire scene, specifically the Irish Composer’s Collective, the Kirkos, Hard Rain and Crash Ensembles. These groups place new and developing composers into contact with seasoned performers, guiding them through the process and the ins and outs of instruments, workshopping material, and eventually performing new pieces in a concert setting. These are safe environments that allow new composers, and music makers somewhere to try out new ideas without the burden of being in an academic setting.
The first steps have been taken with New Music Dublin to start fostering relationships on a more ground level, commissioning new works for brass brands across the country. So I am hopeful that we as a new music community are spurred on to engage with other community groups such as marching bands, orchestras and other ensembles.
Surely some of the people who have gone through the process of learning how to play new music would be happy to engage with the communities that guided them through the first steps of their music-making journeys? Facilitating workshops, guiding improvisations, exploring soundscapes of the world around them and making new works for them are all avenues that seem unexplored, and discarded as an absurd idea. Rather than just assuming that after reaching some level of competency in creating music some number of these people will find their way to the new music scene.
This leaves much of the new musical journey encased in an academic setting of music schools and colleges. Which offers a range of focus on music composition and arranging, potentially leaving something to be desired in terms of a rounded approach to being a composer, or blind spots if they never get introduced to certain elements of music making. I do believe that many of the tutors in these institutions are fantastic people and musicians, trying their best to facilitate as much learning as possible. But they are often left battling against the bureaucracy of the institutes they work within, and also leave out people who might not be suited to an academic setting.
Outside of festivals, what are the options to find new music?
Young members are left with few options for engaging with new music in Ireland in an open forum and outside of institutions. Unit 44 in Stoneybatter, Dublin, is the most open and free that I have come across. They all allow an open platform for a variety of artist meetups, free improvisations and jam sessions, as well as small festivals and chamber opera, all to happen on their chequer floors.
The National Concert Hall, Ireland’s only real venue performing large orchestral works, with the National Symphony Orchestra do have concerts where they pair standard repertoire pieces with newer ones, so if a newer listener was interested in going to these it might be a way to engage with new music written for orchestra. But these are exceedingly rare, as was highlighted by other commentators a few years ago, and then again recently.
Though I will point out that the NSO with the Contemporary Music Centre have recently been putting on their Composer Lab, which they self describe as a professional development initiative aimed at composers who have had limited opportunities to write for symphony orchestra. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, would include a large number of people if Smith’s breakdown of the NSO’s upcoming season is even remotely accurate.
The Leaning Ivory tower of Ballinasloe
Don’t get me wrong, these thoughts and criticisms all come from a place of love and pride after seeing such a level of representation from such a small nation. From being a teenager getting my hands on Glass Glassworks and Koyaanisqatsi mainly driven by its inclusion in films, I have truly enjoyed new music and have enjoyed meeting and engaging with so many people on this journey it has brought me on. But I do have to question how we as a community see ourselves, and how we see ourselves moving forward.
The Irish melting pot of new music is astounding, with such a diverse group of people expressing themselves in new and interesting ways. Challenging ideologies, histories and traditions through the making of new music. I challenge us to create a place where this diverse group of musicians can prosper, to create music and enjoy the art form that I hold dear.
Words On Music 