The Irish Memory Orchestra and 26 musicians with sight loss gave the world premiere of Dave Flynn’s Vision Symphony last weekend. Toner Quinn reviews.
On the same night as the Philip Glass Ensemble was performing at the NCH in Dublin last weekend, a very different interpretation of Glass’ music, and a contrasting ensemble, could be heard in Glór in Ennis (26 Oct.).
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Last weekend (12 Oct.), Irish National Opera gave the first ever Irish performance of an opera by Vivaldi – the story of a formidable woman subjected to ridicule and abuse. Toner Quinn reviews.
The first piece of set design you notice in Irish National Opera’s production of Griselda (Town Hall Theatre, Galway, 12 Oct.) are the eight screens stacked on top of a guard booth to the right of the stage. A laptop and additional screens sit inside the booth; it is clearly a centre of acute observation. Centre stage is a two-floor setting; above is smart, even salubrious, with white walls, a long table, glasses and bottled water; below is functional: a plywood structure, an emergency exit sign and scaffolding. It’s a tale of two worlds: privilege and power, vulnerability and abuse.
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Just as the Galway Jazz Festival was beginning last week, a surprising discussion took place on RTÉ Radio 1. The subject was Seán Ó Riada and his legacy on the forty-eighth anniversary of the composer’s death. Forty-eight years is a long time and one would expect that we would have a clear understanding of his work at this stage, but the discussion fell back on familiar notions: how he ‘changed traditional Irish music’ (he did not but he did popularise it) and how he never managed to resolve the ‘artistic tensions’ in his music between the ‘native’ and ‘European art music’ (he absolutely did with his Nomos works). So there were not many new insights in the discussion, and we have to ask for how much longer Ireland will be in the dark about its own music if we can’t even have a decent discussion about one of its well-known figures. If we can’t get that right, how can we understand what has happened since?
In Tom Goodwin’s 2018 book Digital Darwinism, he asks the most difficult question of media executives: If you were to start your company today, what would it look like and what would it do? Such is the changed environment for broadcasters and publishers that there are no easy answers, but the starting place, Goodwin argues, is to consider what ‘role’ your company has. Where does it fit into your audience’s busy digital lives? How do they use your services? Are you essential to their routine? Having a ‘role’ in your audience’s lives is a valuable first step, a basis upon which to grow.
Toner Quinn 