A new audio documentary series We Only Want The Earth, produced by the Contemporary Music Centre with support from Athena Media/PodcastingIreland and funding from the Sound and Vision Scheme, CnaM, starts on RTÉ lyric fm, March 17th 6pm . The series, presented by Jonathan Grimes of the Contemporary Music Centre, explores how composers in Ireland are engaging with the climate emergency and telling that story in their work. Grimes, a keen cyclist, took to slow travel to record the series and covered over 1,000kms to chat with composers and hear about how the climate theme and concern for our shared future on the planet is flowing into their work and music. The series is produced by Jonathan Grimes and Helen Shaw – Athena Media.
“The feeling of catastrophe – it’s somewhat louder when you hear it” – Karen Power, composer.
How the World Begins Again is an RTÉ lyric fm series celebrating women composers and sound artists working in Ireland, presented by singer Elizabeth Hilliard, who meets twenty women -composers and sound artists – connected to the island of Ireland. They share their stories, their inspirations, creativity, work and challenges.
In the first episode of How The World Begins Again singer Elizabeth Hilliard meets with composers and sound artists, Jane O’Leary, Natalia Beylis and Jenn Kirby and finds out what place and belonging means to them. She discovers how meeting new people from different backgrounds inspires them in their work and how they’ve explored new beginnings in their lives and brought that into their music and soundcraft.
In episode 2, Elizabeth meets with composers and sound artists, Rhona Clarke, Una Lee and Jennifer Walshe and finds out how they found the imposed solitary life that we all experienced in the pandemic. She learns how this was a time for focussed creativity and work, for discovering new ways of creating music, and it allowed time to reflect on how, as artists, we are all individuals on our own journeys.
How The World Begins Again, produced with Athena Media for RTÉ lyric fm, Fridays at 7pm – listen during the interval of The Lyric Concert, and find out more here
How the genetics of Iceland reveals its Irish female roots in story and song.
Acclaimed Irish composer Linda Buckley has a personal and professional affinity to Iceland and in this radio series she teams up with documentary maker Helen Shaw to trace the connections between the two places.
The Icelandic female line goes directly back to gaelic women, mostly taken as slaves, by Norwegian Vikings who settled the land over a thousand years ago. Buckley asks what is the legacy of that biology and what are the physical, cultural and aural traces of that relationship?
An evocative, music-led feature series exploring heritage, language, music, and gender while drawing out the little known stories of the women who mothered Iceland and the sisterhood between the two places.
In this 14th instalment of Vocal Chords, Iarla’s guest in this episode is the Cork born composer Linda Buckley whose work explores and uses the human voice. Linda comes from a family of 9 from the Old Head of Kinsale and grew up in a traditional music environment before studying music at UCC and Trinity College Dublin.
Linda Buckley is a composer/performer based in Dublin/Kinsale who has written extensively for orchestra, and has a particular interest in merging her classical training with the worlds of post punk, folk and ambient electronica. Her work has been described as “fantastically brutal, reminiscent of the glitch music of acts such as Autechre” (Liam Cagney, Composing the Island) and “engaging with an area of experience that new music is generally shy of, which, simplified and reduced to a single word, I’d call ecstasy” (Bob Gilmore, Journal of Music).
Music for theatre includes work by Enda Walsh (Bedbound) and film by Pat Collins (Living in a Coded Land) and Tadhg O’Sullivan (Solas Céad Bliain). Awards include a Fulbright scholarship to NYU and the Frankfurt Visual Music Award 2011 (Silk Chroma).
Recent and upcoming collaborations include work with Mmoths, arrangements from This Mortal Coil, remixes for Augustus and John, as well as performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Icebreaker, Joby Burgess, Ensemble Mise-En and Crash Ensemble. Linda also lectures on the renowned Music and Media Technologies programme at Trinity College Dublin.
She is now an international artist of considerable reputation and her music has been performed by the Dresden Sinfoniker Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Fidelio Trio, Orkest de Ereprijs, Janus Trio, Rothko Trio, University of York Javanese Gamelan, and featured at international festivals including the Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, Gaudeamus Music Week Amsterdam and Seoul International Computer Music Festival.
She is herself a fine singer and her work, like her recent show at the Kilkenny Arts Festival – Antartica in collaboration with the uilleann piper David Power, features her vocal and electronic composition. In this episode Iarla explores Linda’s work and talks about their own collaboration Ó Íochtar Mara which was performed by Crash Ensemble at the Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival in Cork. From January 2018 Linda will take up a new post as Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in Glasgow.
Revelavit Linda Buckley Alice Cocteau Twins The Sensual World Kate Bush Song of the Siren Annette and Linda Buckley Corpus Christi Irene and Linda Buckley Do you remember the planets? Linda Buckley Torann Crash Ensemble O Pastor Animarum Hildegard von Bingen Eriu Linda Buckley An Lacha Bacach Eilis Ní Shuilleabháin Siúl a Rún Linda Buckley Draíocht na Nollag Pro Cathedral Girls’ Choir Haunt The Relay Project Revelavit Ergodos Beloved on the Earth RTE Philharmonic Choir and National Symphony Orchestra Íochtar Mara Iarla O Lionaird and the Vanbrugh String Quartet Fridur Isabelle O Connell Heckla Crash Ensemble Numarimur Linda Buckley Water Sugarcubes Hoppipolla Sigur Ros Drink all your Passion Michelle O Rourke Haunt The Relay Project Antartcia at Night Linda Buckley and David Power Jump Kate Ellis Chiyo BBC Symphony Orchestra Fall Approaches Ruthless Jabiru Chamber Orchestra Haza RTE Contempo Quartet Ekstasis Linda Buckley and Joby Burgess
Glen Hansard is in conversation with fellow singer Iarla Ó Lionáird about his life and work in song in this documentary for RTÉ lyric fm as part of this multi award winning series. The full documentary was broadcast at 6pm on October 29th 2017.
Glen Hansard’s vocal journey began as a young teenager busking on the streets of Dublin but it has taken him to some of the biggest arenas in the world and an academy award for best song in the film ‘Once’. That film was inspired by Glen’s own busking life and he also got to play the lead role.
His film work began in ‘The Commitments’ while he was fronting his band ‘The Frames’ and since then he has worked with his idols Bob Dylan, and the late Leonard Cohen, as well as sharing a stage with international performers like Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
Glen talks with Iarla of a life dedicated to music and shares a song ‘Didn’t He Ramble’ written after the death of his father.
Iarla Ó Lionáird meets sisters Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, two of Ireland’s most respected traditional singers, and shares a conversation of family, song and language with them; from the stories of their father, the singer and folk song collector Aodh Ó Domhnaill, and his sister, the blind singer Neilí Ni Domhnaill, natives of Rann na Feirste, Donegal, to their own roots in the Meath Gaeltacht.
In this segment from the upcoming documentary feature Iarla talks to the sisters about that journey back to Donegal when they were children, to what they see as their spiritual home, and how their Dad would tip them sixpence for the first sighting of Errigal. In the piece you hear the song Níl sé ina lá that the sisters learnt as girls from their Aunt Neilí and recorded by them on the album Idir an Dá Sholas.
The full episode was broadcast on May 5th on RTÉ Lyric fm.
From their first band Skara Brae, with their late brother Micheal, the sisters share their work together and separately, Triona in the ground-breaking Bothy Band and Maighread in her acclaimed solo work. They sing together for Iarla a song once sung by their late Aunty Neili and collected by Maighread’s husband and traditional music devotee, Cathal Goan.
Listen back to the episode in full
Vocal Chords is an Athena Media production for RTE Lyric fm made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and the TV licence fee.
The producer is Helen Shaw, The audio editor is Pearse Ó Caoimh.
The digital editor (behind our website and podcasts) is John Howard.
www.vocalchords.ie
Photo image by Helen Shaw – all rights in Vocal Chords, recordings and images, rests with Athena Media Ltd. www.athenamedia.ie
In a new instalment of Vocal Chords – Iarla Ó Lionáird meets folk singer Peggy Seeger at her home in Oxford to explore her life’s journey in song and song composition. Peggy talks of her childhood growing up under the influence of her older half brother Peter Seeger and in a home where legendary singers like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie would visit to meet her parents, song collectors and composers Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger.
Peggy met, and later married folk singer and writer Ewan MacColl, and she shares her experience of working with Ewan from the late 1950s until his death in the late 1980s. Since then Peggy has continued to write and perform and she now works with her musician sons Neill and Calum and she is now in a civil partnership with Irene Pyper Scott, a Northern Irish singer she first met in 1964 in Belfast.
