New Music from Seán Mac Erlaine

Mac Erlaine performing at a Trailblaze event in Smock Alley Theatre in 2011.

New Music from Seán Mac Erlaine

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and tireless cross-platform collaborator, Seán Mac Erlaine has released a new solo album, on the Ergodos label, called Long After The Music Is Gone.

Seán Mac Erlaine, the artist formerly known as Seán Óg, a clarinet and saxophone player in free improvisation, contemporary jazz, folk music and experimental theatre, in ensembles such as This is How We Fly, Deep End of the Ford, and Trihornophone, a composer and tireless collaborator, has released a new solo album, on the Ergodos label, called Long After The Music Is Gone.

The publicity material suggests this is an album ‘rich with Mac Erlaine’s distinctive supple reed work and subtle electronics.

‘Conceived and recorded in rural Leitrim, Long After The Music Is Gone stands as a meditation on Irish landscape, dipping into the chants of Medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen and the work of Irish philosopher John O’Donoghue.’ Track titles include ‘Clayography’ (which is presented in three separate parts), ‘Truskmore’, ‘Buried Light’, ‘Quarried Light’, and ‘Arroo’ (like Truskmore, one of the Dartry mountains in County Leitrim).

All the music is performed, arranged and composed by Mac Erlaine, except the ‘Amhrán Na Leabhar’ track, which is based on a traditional air associated especially with Seamus Ennis but named here after the Tomás Rua Ó Súilleabháin song version, and ‘O Vis Aeternitatis’ (O Power of Eternity) by Hildegard von Bingen. On different tracks he plays soprano clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, xaphoon and electronics.

In his recent doctoral thesis, Mac Erlaine displayed how the playing of quarter-tone notes offers saxophonists a viable opportunity for greater expressive potential, and the music on this album reflects that pushing of instruments beyond their traditional functioning, through both electronic alteration and innovative playing technique.

The album is available on vinyl, compact disk and digital formats.

ergodos.bandcamp.com.

Published on 29 August 2012

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