Oren Ambarchi

This year’s Sligo New Music festival will feature two Australian musicians: the electric guitarist Oren Ambarchi and recorder player Genevieve Lacey. Programmed by composer Ian Wilson, the festival takes place at the city’s revamped Model venue over 15–17 April 2011. Ambarchi and Lacey will each perform a solo concert, as well as one concert together. The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet and the Sligo-based saxophonist Cathal Roche will also feature in the festival, performing The Book of Ways a new improvisatory work by Wilson.

In an article published in The Journal of Music in 2009, Ian Wilson wrote that Ambarchi’s music defied categorisation. ‘The sound he produces sometimes has the surface sheen of electronica and yet because the generation of the sound is directly physical, from fingers on strings rather than fingers on keys, there is quite a distinct feeling of ebb and flow, of contrasts in timbre and dynamic and even of pitching that you simply don’t get in, for instance, techno music,’ he said. ‘There is also a very strong element of repetition, of a kind which seems akin to certain ambient musics but actually more organic and evolutionary than one would normally find there. Ambarchi himself has said that a lot of what he does is really connected to rock music, but in a very reductive way, as if stripped to the bones.’

Sligo New Music has featured regularly in The Journal of Music since its inception in 2000, through essays by composers, reviews and debate. The following is a selection of articles about previous festivals:

‘A preview of the first Sligo Festival of Contemporary Music’
Frank Corcoran, 2000

‘Un Spirito Sottile’
Ian Wilson, 2003

‘When Form was Blown Open’ (a preview)
John McLachlan, 2006

‘Memory from One to Infinity’ (a review)
John McLachlan, 2006

‘Sketches of Spain’
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, 2007

‘Live Review: Amstel Saxophone Quartet, Maria McGarry (piano), Cathal Roche (saxophone)’
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, 2008

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