INTER/actions Bangor New Music Festival: Beyond Borders
For:
Ed Bennett commission
Find out more by visiting:
www.bangor.ac.uk/music/interactions/
Led by INTER/actions (North Wales), the project commissions a large-scale immersive work by the acclaimed Northern Irish composer Ed Bennett for piano, toy piano, portable harmonium, sampler and electronics (one performer) in partnership with Frontiers+ Festival (Birmingham, England) and Cork Orchestral Society (Ireland).
The composer will return to his roots by taking elements of Irish folk music as points of departure and weaving them into a work of interconnected movements with interactive electronics. Versatile North Wales-based pianist Xenia Pestova will perform on multiple keyboards with triggered samples as the original material evolves over time, exploring themes of migration, identity and belonging through innovative and expressive timbral and rhythmic transformation.
Transplanting Irish folk music into the world of electronic processing will create a unique and haunting sound world that bridges seemingly disparate traditions in an uncompromising and personal way, questioning and extending genre boundaries and creating new identities. The additional “double transplant” of the concert piano, an instrument with its own rich tradition and repertoire, into an unusual context of alternative keyboard interfaces and samples will build a beguiling environment with choreographed elements.
This unique collaboration will bridge geographic, cultural and musical borders to bring a fascinating new work for multiple keyboards and electronics to new audiences.
Frontiers+, Birmingham Conservatoire, 27 March 2015
New Walk Museum, Leicester, 12 April 2015
Eavesdropping, New York, 16 April 2016
INTER/actions Festival for Interactive Electronic Music, Bangor, Spring 2016
Curtis Auditorium, Cork School of Music, Cork Orchestral Society, October 2016