Focus
RTÉ Living Music Festival 2004
The weekend of 20-22 February saw the RTÉ Living Music Festival 2004 at the Helix in Dublin. Last year's very successful Berio-centred event appears to have set the pattern for the festival. This year some major works by Boulez were highlighted, but a number of Irish composers and ensembles were able to show their wares alongside their French contemporaries.
The Many Sides of the Drum
A new book by Gary Hastings on the fife and Lambeg drum tradition of the North of Ireland.
Good Listeners
New albums by The Tap Room Trio (Jesse Smith, Harry Bradley and John Blake) and Mick O'Brien and Caomhín Ó Raghallaigh.
Into the Twilight: Arnold Bax and Ireland
'And in a moment the Celt within me stood revealed,' wrote the English composer Arnold Bax on reading Yeats in 1902. But what really was Arnold Bax's relationship with Ireland? Is it true that Ireland was incapable of responding to his music? Just over fifty years since this intruiging figure died in Cork, Irish composer Séamas de Barra looks at his life and music, and his infatuation with Ireland...
Young Composers' Collective
The background to the newly established YCC.
Artists Left Stranded by the Drying Up of Myth
In the latter part of his essay ‘The Search for Samhita’ (JMI, November-December) Benjamin Dwyer wonders ‘what the role of the artist might be in a Western contemporary society dominated by technology’. Specifically, he speculates on...
Tradition and Aspiration
Fiddle-player Martin Hayes on traditional music in the twenty-first century
Crisis? What Crisis?
In the last issue of JMI, composer Patrick Zuk argued that contemporary music composition is in crisis. Composer and Artistic Director of the 2004 Sligo Contemporary Music festival, Ian Wilson, bats back...
Needed: Flight Simulator
Would-be orchestral musicians in Ireland are at a disadvantage – despite several attempts over the years to address the problem, there is no training orchestra or postgraduate diploma in orchestral studies which could prepare players for positions in Irish orchestras.
Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin – An Dealg Óir/The Golden Thorn
Oriel’s RefloweringAn Dealg Óir/The Golden ThornPádraigín Ní Uallacháin(Gael Linn CEFCD 183)In his introduction to The Hidden Ireland, published in 1925, Daniel Corkery wrote that until ‘a comprehensive study...