A line has been crossed. Will Irish musicians and composers participate in the new US regime?

The Friday before the presidential election, I attended a Music for Galway concert by the JACK Quartet from New York. The final piece in the concert, Early That Summer, was written by the American composer Julia Wolfe. About that work she has written:

While living in Amsterdam [in 1992] I began Early That Summer. I was reading a book about US political history and the author kept introducing small incidents with phrases like ‘Early that summer…’. The incidents would eventually snowball into major political crises or events. I realized that the music I was writing was exactly like this – that I was creating a constant state of anticipation and forward build…

The last line describes the final moments of the work in particular. The four members of the JACK – Chris Otto, Austin Wulliman, John Pickford Richards and Kevin McFarland – play flying notes and intervals. Their familiarity with the work means they can push it and stretch it; it is a high-wire act, almost alarming in its pace. Sizzling intervals spring from the violins; cello releases irate notes; viola is mediating in intervals. We are seized by Wolfe’s musical propulsion… there are no clues as to where it is going… and then it stops. The quartet play restrained simple intervals, light bowing, a modicum of vibrato, gradually coming to a halt. The concert ends and the audience begin to leave. I find I am still in my seat.
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The Journal of Music looks at what the parties are promising for music.

What is the Government’s vision for our musical future? How can we ensure that young musicians realise their potential? How should Ireland’s music infrastructure be developed over the next five or ten years? How can we help musicians and composers achieve international success?

As long as basic services such as health and housing are inadequate, it is difficult to generate detailed or prolonged public discussion on music. Nevertheless, those concerned about Irish musical life do have a case to make. The figures are there – Arts Council funding, upon which music is heavily dependent, has been cut by 29% since 2007.  Continue reading →

Having a harp on our coins only really matters if we give meaning to that symbolism, writes Toner Quinn.

In the summer of 2014, I returned from three days at An Chúirt Chruitireachta, the Irish harp school that has taken place in Termonfeckin, Co. Louth, for thirty years. That evening, I happened upon a discussion on RTÉ 1’s Primetime about the Irish Government’s then budgetary plans.

It wasn’t long before I began to notice the large image intermittently flashing up on the television screen behind the discussion. It is an image that in Ireland we have become so used to that it is sometimes almost invisible to us, and yet there it was, at the heart of our national affairs, its presence a perennial reminder of the depth of Irish musical expression, and it is still reaching out to us one thousand years on. Continue reading →

RTÉ Lyric FM is in the news because of its schedule changes, but the strength of the response is a positive thing.

As 2016 begins, and the economy starts to recover after the crash, how will musical life in Ireland fare? Will it benefit in proportion to the improving economy? 

In Ireland, the cost of music is underestimated. Music is expensive. Musicians and composers of all genres develop their work over decades and they require a substantial infrastructure of venues, promoters and organisations to assist them in reaching their potential and creating the experiences that enrich our lives and our society. Continue reading →

The world of the professional traditional musician appears to be contracting, writes Toner Quinn.

First published in The Journal of Music on 7 July 2015.

In 2012, when we launched a listings service on The Journal of Music, it was in an effort to capture what was happening musically, as in concerts, festivals and other performances. There are not enough writers and editors in the world to track the range of activity in contemporary music life, but using the internet and enabling readers to contribute suddenly presented that opportunity. The key was creating a listings service that was flexible enough to accommodate a huge range of styles, but organised enough to make sense of it all.

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Published in The Journal of Music on 29 April 2015 —

Far from ‘anything goes’, programming a festival of experimental music may be the most difficult type of all. With a new artistic director, the Borealis festival in Bergen, Norway, seized the challenge, writes Toner Quinn.

A brown duffle coat and a cap pulled down. A full, warm, airless room. The audience stood close to the small stage. Shoulders up, he walked around the stage. Hands first in pockets, then wrapped fully around the microphone, then in his pockets again. Halted, at times breathless, conversation; sparks of humour; he would withdraw to the back of the stage to examine his guitar, pick a few notes, then put it down again. He circled the stage a few times more, and then Richard Dawson walked to the front left corner without his guitar, closed his eyes and sang.

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(Published in The Journal of Music on 10 March 2015)

The next steps for the Irish music industry require ‘strong leadership’, says a new report, but where will it come from?

A little while ago, I had a conversation with a man in Conamara, someone who has spent forty years campaigning for the Irish language.

As he related to me some of the details of his campaigns – regular tussles with the state, attemping to elicit support for the minority language community in the west – a question occurred to me: in those forty years, I asked, had any private individual of means ever approached him, intimated that he or she appreciated his efforts, and offered financial support for his ambitious ideas. The answer, to my genuine surprise, was no.

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Throughout 2014, BBC Radio 3’s Breakfast programme played a work by a British composer every morning, part of a year-long project called ‘Best of British’. It made for an impressive line-up: Britten, Skempton, Bax, Nyman, Elgar, MacMillan, Bryars, Delius, Tippett, Warlock, Purcell, Adés, Walton, Maxwell Davies, Dowland, Birtwistle, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Moeran, Tallis and dozens more. A few Irish composers made the list too: Stanford, Field and Trimble.

These names are actually typical of the station’s content. If a listener to BBC Radio 3 isn’t already familiar with their work, they Continue reading →

This week, Enterprise Ireland announced a €200,000 fund for four counties in the south-east of Ireland to ‘boost start-ups’. In September, it announced a fund of €200,000 for three counties in the north-east. In March, start-ups in the county of Cork received the same fund. Enterprise Ireland also announced a €500,000 fund aimed at stimulating start-ups among graduates, and, with Hoxton Ventures, a €5.9 million venture capital fund for early-stage businesses. 

As well as this type of funding for start-ups, there are accelerator programmes, incubators, digital hubs, seed funds, venture Continue reading →

Musical life is more complex than it appears online.

Over three day days in November, I attended the Web Summit in Dublin. I was motivated to go because I wanted to hear some creative ideas on the digital world and perhaps apply them to my publishing work. That there was a dedicated Music Summit on the third day was, for a musician, a bonus.

There were actually nine stages, the others being Enterprise, Marketing, Food, Library, Builders, Machine, Sports and Centre, Continue reading →