Topographies

Topographies

Date: 24 - 25 Mai

Venue: PAS Berlin - Kaiserin Augusta Allee 101, 10553

Description: Topographies Mini-Festival brings together leading exponents of improvised and experimental music from Ireland andGermany for two days of New Music at PAS Berlin. Presented by the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland, in partnership with Artistic Director Francis Heeryand PAS Berlin, the festival connects Irish artists with some of the best international improvisers on the Berlin scene today. Balancing improvised and composed works, the programme features three specially commissioned works by Irish composers, drawing on geographical and psychological landscapes.

---- Friday 24th May----

18:00 Topographies Festival Opening

All welcome to celebrate the beginning of the festival before the first performance at 8pm. Reception kindly supported bythe Embassy of Ireland in Germany.

20:00 MoonPhases (2017/2022, Francis Heery)

MoonPhases is a long-form spectral work written as a homage to W.B. Yeats’ occult work A Vision. This book was derived from notes he took during daily seance-like sessions with his wife Georgie, who would channel messages from the beyond, either through speech or automatic writing. MoonPhasesfeatures a ‘hermetically charged’ drone and sets of performance instructions on 28 cards.


---- Saturday 25th May ----

13:00 Inferno (2021, Elliot Murphy)

Inferno is a work for solo cello and interactive pre-recorded strings written in celebration of the septuacentennial of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It follows Dante’s journey as he descends into the underworld marking each new location with a sonic landscape. Its modular composition allows the pre-recorded aleatoric parts to be flexibly recomposed during performance while the live cello part is improvised simultaneously. Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland.

15:00‘ … and if these were islands …’

A long form improvisation featuring various constellations and clusters of improvising musicians from Ireland and Berlin.

19:00 Uncharted

Panel discussion with artists and composers featured in Topographies, in conversation with the ContemporaryMusic Centre’s Jonathan Grimes. The conversation will be recorded for CMC Ireland’s dedicated New Music podcast, Amplify.


20:00 Topographies Triptych

Three premieres written especially for the Topographies festival, for piano, electric guitar, cello and electronics by Francis Heery, Ellen King and Elliot Murphy.


Festival Performers

Dan Bodwell: Double bass
John Godfrey: Electric guitar
Francis Heery: Electronics/composer
Brad Henkel: Trumpet
Jung-Jae Kim: Saxophone
Izumi Kimura: Piano
Ellen King: Electronics/composer
Malwina Kołodziejczyk: Saxophone
Vincent Laju: Cello
Shane Latimer: Electric guitar
Elo Masing: Violin
Elliot Murphy: Cello/composer
Ernst Surberg: Synth

Design: Michael Kelly (@michaelkelly.makes)

Topographies is part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.