This is John Harris’ eighth edition of the New Music Dublin (NMD) festival since he was appointed in 2017. It may be difficult for readers to remember through the haze of the pandemic, but his first edition in 2018 was cancelled because of snow. A ‘defrosted’ event took place later that year with the premiere of Kevin Volans’ Gol na mBan San Ár featuring uilleann piper David Power. When the second edition of the festival took place in March 2019, Journal of Music reviewer Adrian Smith credited Harris with two insights that made it a success: 

The first was to have clearly figured out the geography of the Irish music scene and taken soundings from all quarters to see what would work for a festival. … The second thing he did was to ensure a wide representation for all the various cliques of the Irish new music scene.

In 2020, New Music Dublin was one of the few festivals that managed to sneak in at the beginning of the year before the pandemic, and it delivered Jennifer Walshe’s SELF-CARE, a Diatribe stage, and Benjamin Dwyer’s What is the Word. The following year was an ambitious online experience that seems like another world now and provided the success of Barry O’Halpin’s Wingform. NMD made a full return in 2022 with Walshe’s PERSONHOOD, and then in 2023 Ann Cleare’s MIDHE and Andrew Hamilton’s Friendly Piece, about which reviewer James Camien McGuiggan said: ‘I will carry its friendly burbling in my heart as a revelation of what music can be.’ Last year saw Kirkos’ climate crisis themed Beginner’s Guide to Slow Travel and Linda Buckley’s Tuile agus Trá featuring Iarla Ó Lionáird.

These are just a small sample of the hundreds of works that have been performed at the festival, but what has the Scotland-based Harris learnt about music in Ireland from his experience as curator?

I’ve learnt a hell of a lot about the breadth and depth of Irish music. I knew it was a very broad and deep and interesting and interconnected field, but I don’t think I had a clue just how broad and deep and interesting and interconnected it actually was.

New Music Dublin has tended to bring together the various pockets of the Irish new music scene at different times, whether it is an Ergodos series or Diatribe stage or concerts curated by Evlana or Crash Ensemble. This year there is a partnership with Improvised Music Company (IMC) with two concerts at their venue The Cooler, including the Corás Trio, which combines free improvisation with traditional music. It was an IMC showcase that brought the trio to Harris’ attention: ‘Very interesting, very inventive – something that I hadn’t necessarily done before in the festival’. The Cooler also features an entirely blacked out improvisation set – for both artists and audiences.

Andrew Hamilton and Crash Ensemble following the premiere of Friendly Piece in 2023 (Photo: Molly Keane)

Restlessness
The festival now attracts three times the audience it did when Harris began and he believes the ‘hunger for interesting and new stuff is real.’ He suggests there is a certain ‘restlessness’ to Irish musical culture:

For me, and this is a very personal way of looking at it … [music in Ireland] proclaims a creative attitude towards life, which is a funny thing to say because a lot of people here say people tend to accept things as they are. Actually what I discover, and what I feel very strongly, is this restlessness, the feeling [from artists] that: I have to change something, I want to make something new, I don’t want things to be as they are, I want them to be different, I want it to be new, I want it to be thought about in a different way, I want to be continuously reevaluating the way I think about something, I want to be continuously reevaluating the way I work.

Are the reasons historical, political, social, related to contemporary events, or a normal part of any European new music scene? He doesn’t venture reasons, but he experiences it:

That kind of restlessness and desire to build anew, that’s really what this festival is all about. It’s not accepting things as they are. I’m not suggesting that the people are creating an ideal, a utopian way of thinking about things, but there’s almost a continual ferment of new ideas, of rethinking things as they are, not accepting them as they are.

Harris sees this is restlessness as related to another aspect of music in contemporary Ireland, which is his perception that there is an acceptance of creativity as a way of life: 

Ireland has as one of the touchstones of its identity a modernist novel, James Joyce’s Ulysses. This is something that everybody knows about. That is not the case in Scotland or England or in Wales or even in France or Belgium. The idea of creating new stuff, of being a composer… people regard that as a valid thing to do with your life… whereas in other countries it’s always ‘what’s your proper job?’ In Ireland, it is a perfectly valid way of being, which is unbelievably valuable as a mindset. And the seriousness. People take it bloody seriously. That is a phenomenal gift, and it’s a phenomenal thing to work with because you just don’t get it everywhere.

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore who performs at New Music Dublin on 3 April (Photo: Vera Marmelo)

Adding the international
Ireland’s squashed-up-on-a-small-island multi-sided musical world provides the interconnectedness Harris describes, and then New Music Dublin adds in an international element. This year’s festival again combines the domestic and voices from abroad, including Sonic Youth’s guitarist Thurston Moore; Bombast! showcasing works by Black composers in an ensemble that includes members of US-based composer collective Blacknificent 7; improviser John Butcher and an 11-piece ensemble presenting his Dublin Fixations; and there are works by Olga Neuwirth, Pärt, Unsuk Chin and Claude Vivier. On the Ireland front, there is a concert performance of a new opera by Irene Buckley, Lament for Art O’Leary, based on the eighteenth-century poem; two major works from Ed Bennett including a piano concerto performed by Xenia Pestova Bennett; a work by Ann Cleare performed at the Dunsink Observatory; plus performances by Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, Evlana and Crash Ensemble and premieres by Donnacha Dennehy, Christine Tobin and Lara Weaver.

The challenges facing new music in Ireland, according to Harris, are similar to those facing his own country Scotland: the presence of powerful, conservative England, obscuring the view of what’s happening in Europe. Harris also feels that the DIY ethic in Ireland sometimes means important work doesn’t get the time and support it needs to develop fully.

Another theme that he notices among Irish artists is the urge to reach far back into the country’s past, such as in Cleare’s work: ‘There are people coming to me saying that I want to do something based on these very old ideas, reaching four, five, six hundred years back to something much deeper for inspiration for how things can be, for inspiration about identity, defining oneself, defining the country.’

John Butcher ensemble who perform on 4 April (Photo: Francis Comyn)

Five days of new music
This year’s festival touches on many of these themes and over five days there are over thirty events with almost one hundred works to be performed. The festival begins on Wednesday 2 April and runs until Sunday 6 April. It commences with Ann Cleare’s Nocturne, Crash Ensemble’s Postcards and Jonathan Nangle’s Blue Haze of Deep Time, which is a promenade installation. ‘I have been on to Jonathan Nangle for a long time asking if we could have a public installation,’ Harris says. ‘His approach towards making combined visual acoustic art I really love.’

Thursday sees American clarinettist Berginald Rash with members of US-based composer collective Blacknificent; Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble’s Surround Sounds with works by Robert Coleman, Lara Weaver and Pedro Rebelo; Caimin Gilmore’s BlackGate; a screening of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 film Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète) with a new score co-written by Erik Friedlander and Matthew Nolan; the premiere of works from Improvised Music Company’s Ban Bam award; and Corás Trio featuring Kevin McCullagh, Paddy McKeown and Conor McAuley.

Friday begins with the return of accordionist Andreas Borregaard with a Laura Bowler/Sam Redway work; five new commissions from Crash Ensemble in You Heard It First; John Butcher’s Dublin Fixations; National Symphony Orchestra performing the world premiere of John Buckley’s Clarinet Concerto performed by Carol McGonnell, plus Pärt and Chin; the world premiere of Ed Bennett’s environmentally themed work All Earth Once Drowned; and a completely blacked out improvisation at The Cooler titled In the Dark.

Saturday will begin with the NCH Gamelan Orchestra with uilleann piper Mark Redmond and cellist Martin Johnson. This will be followed by The Totally Made-Up Orchestra; Ficino Ensemble and Lotte Betts-Dean performing Claude Vivier’s Bouchara and the world premiere of Donnacha Dennehy’s set of songs titled Agency; Chamber Choir Ireland with a programme of contemporary choral music; Thurston Moore’s Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations; and Barry Guy’s The Blue Shroud.

The final day features works from Legato, an international composer development programme; Cór Linn and Cór na nÓg with works by Marian Ingoldsby, Seán Doherty, and Ciarán Kelly and Carl Corcoran; Quiet Music Ensemble performing four world premieres by Scott McLaughlin, Rob Curgenven, Rory Tangney and Cat Lamb; Evlana ensemble with works by Judith Ring, Joan Tower, Stephen Gardner and Keiko Abe plus special guest poet Paula Meehan; RTÉ Concert Orchestra giving the Irish premiere of Irene Buckley’s opera Lament for Art O’Leary with Kim Sheehan and Emma Nash; Ed Bennett’s new Piano Concerto and Olga Neuwirth’s Miramondo Multiplo; and finally a live version of Jonathan Nangle’s Blue Haze of Deep Time performed by Crash Ensemble. There are also the NMDX networking events run by the Contemporary Music Centre.

Harris is always asked what he is looking forward to in particular, but he resists that: ‘I have to be looking forward to every single gig. That’s my litmus test for programming the festival.’

New Music Dublin takes place from 2 to 6 April at the National Concert Hall and various other venues in Dublin. For further information and booking, visit https://www.newmusicdublin.ie.

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