Kilkenny Arts Festival: A soundscape that spans a century of music-making

This work is an experimental multi-media piece of music that explores the role of technology and media in Irish traditional music. I have long been interested in the way traditional musicians have interacted with recording technology since its invention at the end of the 19th Century.

Irish traditional music has always had a multi-faceted relationship with modernity - the music we play references and is grounded in the past but equally it has to happen in the present and so there is always a contemporary element to it. The title 78 Revolutions refers to the 78rpm (revolutions per minute) of the early gramophone discs but it also celebrates the circular nature of traditional music, turning back on itself while moving inexorably forward.

This piece utilises archival audio as well as live musicians and electronics to create an amalgamation of ancient and modern sounds. Tracks from the early days of the recording of Irish traditional music on wax cylinders and gramophone records are manipulated to create a soundscape that spans a century of music-making.

The recordings from the early part of the 20th Century by the likes of Patsy Touhey, John Kimmel, John McKenna and Michael Coleman have dominated what we regard as traditional music for the past century. This performance will set them in a new light, revelling in the brilliance of their music as well as in the idiosyncracies of noise and crackles that are so evocative of that golden age of recording. Most of these pieces uses bits of music from my own collection – cassettes of programmes recorded from the radio and recordings of sessions as well as wax cylinders, 78rpm records, cassettes, CDs and digital downloads. The earliest bit of audio in the performance is from a recording made of the blind Galway piper Denis Delaney made in 1899 at the Feis Cheoil in Dublin.

It’s hard to imagine what he would have made of the changes in recording technology over the next 125 years. While placing a microphone in front of a musician in a recording studio undoubtedly changes how they may play and we often assume that there’s something lost in this interaction, without that microphone we would only be guessing at what many of these musicians would have sounded like.

I’m fascinated by how musicians and their music have dealt with these confrontations with technology. 78 Revolutions adds further levels of engagement through my own computer manipulations of these tracks and the live musicians’ interactions with the material on the stage.

The original version of the piece was composed as part of a residency at Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council and performed at dlr LexIcon in 2018. For this new iteration of the project in Kilkenny I am excited to be working with acclaimed stage director Tom Creed and lighting designer Stephen Dodd to further develop the staging of the piece and enhance its visual impact.

We’re trying to create a really immersive experience with video, lighting, dance and music and it’s fantastic to have a wonderful array of artists to work with. As well as Tom and Stephen I’ll be joined on stage by Mick O’Brien (pipes), Liz Knowles (fiddle), Mick McAuley (accordion), Kate Ellis (cello), Ryan Molloy (piano) and Sibéal Davitt (dance).