Evidently, I missed a few great gigs in Ireland last year. Fortunately, the Louth Contemporary Music Society has preserved them. Folks’ Music documents three works commissioned by them, each one extraordinary in their own way. The first piece presented here is almost powerful enough to overwhelm the two that follow: Cassandra Miller’s The City, Full of People is a work for unaccompanied mixed chorus teems with life, with individual voices cascading over each other in repeated figures that seem to blend into each other, creating a vocal labyrinth. The piece builds upon her previous work made from her privately singing along to other music, multiplied and expanded. The basic approach is similar to her earlier a capella composition Guide, but here that piece’s wild and woolly nature has been tamed into something more controlled and potent than unalloyed catharsis. The structure here is simple but ingenious, falling into three sections: the first launching out at full tilt before resolving to an end with extreme slowness, the second building from nothing to recapture the force of the beginning, followed by a coda which condenses the music’s essence into a final moment for contemplation. There’s also skill in knowing when to stop.
The performance by Chamber Choir Ireland (directed by Paul Hiller) is a model of clarity and strength, using directness instead of dramatics to gain the listener’s undivided attention. They also premiered Linda Catlin Smith’s Folio, a work which feels more conventional in this company but further illustrates Smith’s skill in making works of subtle complexity while appearing simple to the point of naivety on initial hearing. The texts are selections from Emily Dickinson, which seems like a natural fit, words and setting each frank while keeping full grasp of the meaning elusive. Between these two choral works comes Laurence Crane’s String Quartet No. 2, played by the Esposito Quartet. Crane shares with Smith the ability to speak plainly while remaining cryptic. It comes out more strongly in his longer works such as this one, as one clear statement follows another without resolution. The Quartet seems more tightly structured than many of Crane’s previous pieces on this scale, the impression of wandering replaced by an implied relationship between the handful of distinct phrases juxtaposed here, each reduced to the most slender of elements so that they seem to defy elaboration. Esposito plays with obstinate authority to assert this music has a greater and more troubling presence than most of the fashionably subdued and tonal.
On the same date Chamber Choir Ireland were signing in Dublin, a concert took place in Dundalk: fiddler Zoë Conway led a band of traditional Irish musicians in a rendition of Terry Riley’s In C. Yeah yeah, you say, that old chestnut again; sure it’s good for a bit of fun but do we need to hear yet another gimmick version of it? Well in the first place, In C is always worth hearing done well and this version is a cracker. Secondly, “a bit of fun” with an Irish band is always going to brighten your evening immeasurably. Thirdly, this is In C Irish, a new version developed with Riley’s imprimatur to accommodate the musicians’ background in improvisation with the notated particles that make up the score. With the insistent pulse, the instruments work together a treat; the most striking difference here is the way the musicians give each other room to foreground certain elements as solos, adding new interpretations to the music throughout while never letting the momentum droop. It reminds you that the piece is about communal music making, above demonstrating theoretical questions over indeterminacy and open form. Given the piece’s celebratory atmosphere it feels fitting when the band end the piece in a glorious free-for-all that feels in keeping with the spirit of the work. Two trad encores top off the evening. Éamonn Quinn, director of the Louth society, cautioned me that “maybe it is only for Irish folk.” He was wrong.
