Fragments to Form a Whole

George Gurdjieff

Fragments to Form a Whole

Combining music from sources as far afield as Lebanon and County Sligo, Louth Contemporary Music Society’s fourth release, In Search of the Miraculous is described as ‘a search for unity’. The album brings together performances by LCMS’s resident EQ Ensemble, the English vocal group the Hilliard Ensemble, Dublin-based Russian pianist Elisaveta Blumina and guitarists John Feeley and Pavlos Kanellakis.

Compositions on In Search of the Miraculous include music by the Turkish composer and pianist Fazil Say (who is currently on trial for allegedly insulting Islam on Twitter), the English saxophonist and composer John Surman, the little-known Armenian composer Vache Sharafyan, and Sligo-based composer Siobhán Cleary.

Eamonn Quinn, the man behind the album and LCMS, which was founded in 2006, said the title of the album was inspired by the book of the same name by Russian esotericist Peter Ouspensky, which laid out some of the teachings of his teacher, George Gurdjieff — Gurdieff’s image graces the cover of the album. ‘John Zorn told me about Ouspensky’s book, which was originally titled “Fragments of an Unknown Teaching”,’ said Quinn. ‘The fragments implying that there are little snippets that you have to put together to make one whole system. The album is like that, little gems that really work together as one holistic listen.’

louthcms.org

Published on 7 February 2013

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