2015 programme brochure

GALWAY EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL MAY 14 - 17, 2015

TIME RHYTHM • TACTUS • PULSE • MUSIC PAST

Time is of the essence at the 20th Galway Early Music Festival, where you’ll find a Feast of Fools, ticking clocks, apocalyptic visions, and a time warp!

PROGRAMME & TICKETS www.galwayearlymusic.com, Charlie Byrnes & at the door

Galway Early Music would like to thank its sponsors and friends, without whose support the Festival would not happen.

SUPPORTED

BY

MEDIA SPONSORS

PRINT PARTNER

SILVER PATRONS Michael & Clare Cuddy Tom Grealy Kimberly LoPrete Riana & Pat O’Dwyer Seán & Lois Tobin Janet Vinnell

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO St Nicholas Collegiate Church Connacht Tribune for The Print Works The Loft @ Seven Charlie Byrnes Bookshop Centre for Ancient, Medieval & Pre-Modern Studies, NUI Galway Galway Early Music is a member of REMA - The European Early Music Network

Galway Early Music

@gwy_earlymusic

WELCOME TO THE th

20

GALWAY EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL! Medieval, renaissance and baroque music highlighting many different angles and sub-themes of ‘time’ - the cycle of the seasons, the monastic hours, the ages of man, the end of the world and, on a lighter note, composers’ joy in playing with the rhythm, tactus and pulse of musical time.

Musical magic with Andrew Lawrence-King, The Harp Consort, Sequentia with Benjamin Bagby and Norbert Rodenkirchen, Pandora’s Box, the Alphabet Baroque Club, Aoife Nic Athlaoich & Yonit Kosovske, Simon O’Dwyer & Ancient Music Ireland, St Nicholas Schola Cantorum, Moonfish Theatre Company and more!

An exciting festival of beautiful and fascinating music in the timeless medieval city of Galway.

CON LUDUS DANIELIS PLAY-TIME: ancient ritual, ordered chaos, medieval opera

Directed by Andrew Lawrence-King The Harp Consort Wolodymyr Smishkewych, Emily Askew, Sarah Stuart

& St Nicholas Schola Cantorum

Thursday, May 14, 8:00 pm St Nicholas Collegiate Church €18 / €14 concession / €7 student

Within the ancient cathedral, the Work of God, the eternal round of plainchant liturgy, marked the weeks, the days and the hours.

Even at midnight, the monks broke the Great Silence to sing the service of Matins. But on one cold, dark night in the northern French Abbey of Beauvais, a young lad interrupted the sacred ritual to announce Playtime…

Ludus Danielis, the 12th-century Play of Daniel can well be described as ‘medieval opera’. Andrew Lawrence-King’s staged production transports you back in time, to experience the largest-scale musical work of the Middle Ages as participants. To poetry and music in the strong rhythms of conductus you, in the role of the townspeople of Beauvais, will witness this extraordinary spectacle of partying monks, hide-and-seek and running games, a donkey on the loose, beautiful Queens & feasting Kings, doom-laden writing on the wall, invasion and assassination, political intrigue, apocalyptic prophecy, angelic revelation, bitter lamenting and joyful celebration.

CERT PERFORMERS Ludus Danielis is an Il Corago production. Il Corago is a historical opera production team that works with musicians to produce a genuinely historical production that allows the universal appeal of great works of the past to speak for itself.This exciting production combines professional musicians, The Harp Consort, Galway’s choir school, St Nicholas Schola Cantorum, and guest musicians, who join as Il Corago interns.

Andrew Lawrence-King, director Director of Il Corago, baroque opera & orchestral director, Early Harp virtuoso and imaginative continuo-player, specialist in baroque gesture and Historical Action, Andrew Lawrence-King is one of the world’s leading performers of Early Music.

A creative and inspiring leader, he has directed baroque operas, oratorios and chamber music in leading concert halls all over the world. In 2013 his duo recital with Jordi Savall won Australia’s prestigious Helpmann Award for Chamber Music Performance.

The Harp Consort 2015 is also the 20th birthday of The Harp Consort, a multi-awardwinning ensemble that excels at improvisation within the distinct styles of baroque, Renaissance and medieval music. The Harp Consort’s programmes range from medieval drama and solo songs to exuberantly danced suites. They have appeared many times at the Galway Early Music Festival.

St Nicholas Schola Cantorum St Nicholas Schola Cantorum was established in 2012 and revives the ancient collegial establishment in a new way and for the benefit of the wider Galway community.The Schola has five choral ensembles ranging from the choristers, comprising boys and girls aged 7-14, to Collegium, a chamber choir comprising Galway’s finest choral singers, specialising in the great polyphony of the Renaissance period.

CONCERT WHEN I DO COUNT THE CLOCK THAT TELLS THE TIME PANDORA’S BOX Miguel Tantos Sevilliano, *Patrick Kenny, John Kenny alto & tenor sackbut, tenor & bass trombone, recorders, voice with guest Maria Caswell, baroque violin

Friday, May 15, 8:00 pm St Nicholas Collegiate Church

€18 / €14 concession / €7 student

In a performance of music spanning 900 years, all inspired by meditations upon time, this trio of multi-instrumentalists are joined by American baroque violinist Maria Caswell. Poetry and the spoken word are a vital element, including Shakespeare, anonymous 13th-century French troubadours, a contemporary Scot, Brian Nisbet, and Greek myth in the form of Rachel Stott’s “Cylla & Charybdis” for narrator, baroque violin and 2 sackbuts.

Pandora’s Box is a trio of hidden delights, combining music of the late medieval and renaissance periods with contemporary composition, improvisation, poetry and physical theatre.

Weaving a subtle tapestry of words and music, poetry of love and intrigue from the courts, pilgrim routes and cloisters of Old Europe, to gritty modern sound worlds. Lift the lid and watch what flies out! *Patrick Kenny replaces Emily White for this concert

CONCERT A MUSIC FOR GALWAY CONCERT in cooperation with Galway Early Music

THE CELLO GOES BAROQUE Aoife Nic Athlaoich, cello Yonit Kosovske, harpsichord

Saturday, May 16, 1:00 pm St Nicholas Collegiate Church

€12 / €10 concession / €7 student In this lunchtime concert, Aoife Nic Athlaoich and Yonit Kosovske present four sonatas for cello and continuo, featuring works by 18th-century composers Francesco Geminiani, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean Zewalt Triemer and Jean-Baptiste Barrière. The four sonatas selected for this programme reveal some distinct national styles, and we also hear merging sounds that embody the transnational, cosmopolitan nature of musical study and travel that was in full bloom during this period. From the brilliant to the tender, decadent to transparent, this recital offers the listener a spirited and evocative mid-day journey through sounds birthed 300 years ago.

Dublin born Aoife Nic Athlaoich enjoys a versatile musical career, equally at home playing on period instruments as performing newly commissioned works. Aoife has performed with many period ensembles, including the orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Irish baroque orchestra, and is a member of the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

Dr. Yonit Kosovske has performed as a soloist, chamber artist, and artistic director throughout the United States, Israel, Hong Kong, Spain, Ireland, Ecuador & Colombia.

Holding degrees in both modern & historical keyboard instruments, Yonit concertizes on harpsichord, fortepiano, chamber organ, and modern piano.

CON FRAGMENTS FOR THE END OF TIME SEQUENTIA Benjamin Bagby, voice and harps Norbert Rodenkirchen, flute and harp Saturday, May 16, 8:00 pm An Taibhdhearc

€18 / €14 concession / €7 student

From the time of Christianity’s introduction into Europe until the end of the first millennium, apocalyptic images of the End of Days and the Last Judgement were widespread, both in texts and in the visual arts. These images at times bear a remarkable similarity to the pagan Germanic descriptions of the world’s destruction during the final terrible battle between the gods and their mortal enemies, the giants. But the Greek word apokalypsis actually means unveiling, or revelation. Medieval artists created an especially powerful body of sung poetry, often in obscure images and language, visionary and prophetic, to prepare the singer and listener alike for a particular inner voyage of comprehension, and to awaken the soul to the experience of ‘seeing’ that which is one day to be revealed.

In this program, Sequentia explores the musical world of these surprising, powerful texts, some of which survive only as fragments. The instruments used in this concert include reconstructions of Germanic harps, an early medieval triangular harp, and copies of medieval transverse flutes (including a flute made from a swan’s bone).

CERT SEQUENTIA

Vocalist, harper and scholar Benjamin Bagby has been an important figure in the field of medieval musical performance for more than 30 years. After musical studies in the USA (Oberlin Conservatory and Oberlin College) and Switzerland (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis), he and the late Barbara Thornton formed Sequentia in 1977 in Cologne, Germany, where the ensemble was based until Mr. Bagby moved to Paris in 2002.

Mr. Bagby created more than 70 innovative concert programs of medieval music and music drama, giving performances in Western and Eastern Europe, North & South America, North and West Africa, the Middle East, Japan, Korea, and Australia.

Norbert Rodenkirchen, who studied flute and Baroque traverso with Hans Martin Mueller and GĂźnther Hoeller at the Staatliche Musikhochschule KĂśln, has been the flute player of Sequentia since 1996 and also works regularly with the French ensemble Dialogos directed by Katarina Livljanic.

In 2012 he released his third own CD, Hameln Anno 1284 / Medieval flute music on the trail of the Pied Piper on the label Christophorus/note1. He performed Hameln Anno 1284 at the Galway Early Music Festival in 2014.

Supported by the Centre for Ancient, Medieval & PreModern Studies NUI, Galway

CONCERT TIME WARP! ALPHABET BAROQUE CLUB Judiyaba, treble viol , Maria Caswell, violin Gwyneth Davis, viola da gamba Phebe Craig, harpsichord

Sunday, May 17, 4:00 pm The Print Works €15 / €10 concession / €7 student

Time Warp: A hypothetical distortion of time in which people and events from one age can be imagined to exist in another age.

- The Free Dictionary.

The Alphabet Baroque Club (ABC) play their patent pending Time Machine and move us back centuries for a look at how composers were playing with concepts of time in music. Pieces played forward and backward at the same time – Pieces in unusual meters, pieces in compound meters, pieces in multiple meters played simultaneously – Songs about time – A satire with peripheral bears and monkeys, and lovely trio sonatas!

The Alphabet Baroque Club is a sunny California-based group of friends who take a break from their professional musical lives to have a great time playing music they love but can’t make a living at. With a violin, treble viol, bass viol, and harpsichord, they are able to take on music from the medieval to high baroque with varying degrees of anachronism and humor. Their concert will send you away with a smile on your face and beautiful music in your ears.

FREE EVENT THRICE UPON A TIME! MOONFISH THEATRE Saturday, May 16, 12 pm The Loft @ Seven

Moonfish Theatre is back, with its ever-popular lively and humorous take on storytelling and music. This year the tale is Grimm, with a capital G - and two ms.

There’s a ball in Fairytale Land and the mysterious Princess Everything wants to go. But only fairytale characters are allowed in. She has three chances to convince the gatekeepers of her fairytale pedigree. How will she do it? What is the magic ingredient of the perfect fairytale? Is it an evil step mother? Is it a prince? Is it a pea? Come along and find out!

Moonfish Theatre is a Galwaybased theatre company committed to the production of high-quality, accessible theatre on the national and international stage. Past productions for GEMF include Bonny & Read, based on the true-life story of two female pirates, as well as Noah’s Ark, Aucassin & Nicolette and Buile Shuibhne, based on the medieval originals.

Moonfish Theatre will be touring their highly acclaimed production of Star of the Sea, based on the Joseph O’ Connor book, throughout Ireland in the Autumn.

FREE EVENT SLIP SLIDIN’ AWAY Trumpas,Trombones & Sackbuts sifting through the sands of time PANDORA’S BOX ANCIENT MUSIC IRELAND Sunday, May 17, 12:00 pm The Print Works

Simon O’Dwyer and John Kenny share a 20 year friendship and have been partners in crime in many a project involving ancient instruments, but this is the first time (as far as we know) that the ancient horns of Ireland have been combined with the ancient trombone, the sackbut.

OK, the sackbut is a mere babe of 500 years compared to the bronze age hordes of Éire, but this is a unique chance to bring the family together. Ancient Music Ireland and Pandora’s Box combine in a program of improvisation, composition and storytelling.

FREE EVENT TIME TO DANCE! Farandoles, Bransles & Pavanes for Everyone GEMF DANCERS & MUSICIANS Sunday, May 17, 1:30 pm The Print Works

Whether you’re a professional dancer or someone who believes they have two left feet, you’ll enjoy this taste of medieval & renaissance dance. The GEM dancers and musicians will introduce you to the foot-tapping tunes and simple steps of the farandole (the line dance of the medieval period), joyous Renaissance bransles that mimic horses and washerwomen, and the stately pavane, which opened the dancing at the court balls of the Renaissance.

In The Print Works, surrounded by memories of 20 years of The Galway Early Music Festival, let your feet take you back a few hundred years!

EXHIBITION SUSPENDED IN TIME A Celebration, Exhibition & Performance of the great Irish Horns of the 1st millennium BC ANCIENT MUSIC IRELAND Saturday, May 16, 12:00 - 4:00 pm Sunday, 11:00 - 1:00 pm The Print Works A celebration, exhibition and performance of the great Irish instruments of the first millennium BC. The perfect balance between musical accuracy and visual perfection.

The exhibition allows spectators to experience a hands on approach and even attempt to play.

Instruments will include reproduction pairs of horns from Northern, Central and Southern Ireland, examples of the Bronze Age instrument family 1,000 – 600 BC, a pair of parade/ceremonial trumpets like those which were played in the time of Queen Medb and Cú Chulainn, and especially featuring the newly completed Ard Brin trumpa reproduction – the most beautiful musical instrument ever made – the golden TALK & PERFORMANCE trumpa.

Saturday, May 16 2:30 pm The Print Works

FREE

EXHIBITION

Friday, May 15, 2:00 - 4:00 pm Saturday & Sunday, 11:00 - 3:00 pm The Print Works A celebration of 20 years of amazing music, outstanding performers, music and fun on the streets, and a big thanks to all the organisors, volunteers, and audience members through-out the past twenty years. Posters, programmes, costumes, videos, masks, musical instruments, press coverage, and photos reflect the excitement and wonderful atmosphere of festivals past.

INSTRUMENT MAKERS EXHIBITION Saturday, May 16, 11:00 - 3:00 pm The Print Works The making of a musical instrument is both an art and a craft. Sometimes we forget that without quality instruments, there can be no music. This exhibition highlights Irish artists and crafts people who make instruments, featuring historical and traditional instrument makers.

DAY-BY-DAY EXHIBITIONS in THE PRINT WORKS Fri, May 15, 2pm-4pm & Sat & Sun, 11am - 4pm 20 Years of the Galway Early Music Festival Sat & Sun, 11am - 4pm Suspended in Time: Ancient Irish Horns Sat, 11am - 4pm Music Instrument Makers Exhibition

Thursday, May 14 5:30 pm

Official Opening of the Festival The Print Works ALL WELCOME!

8:00 pm

Ludus Danielis - The Play of Daniel dir. Andrew Lawence-King with The Harp Consort and St Nicholas Schola Cantorum St Nicholas Collegiate Church €18 / €14 concession / €7 Full-time student

Friday, May 15 8:00 pm

When I do Count the Clock that Tells the Time Pandora’s Box St Nicholas Collegiate Church €18 / €14 concession / €7 Full-time student

TICKET BOOKING Online: www.galwayearlymusic.com From 1 May: Charlie Byrnes Bookshop At door of concerts FESTIVAL TICKET: €75 / €60 concession (includes all concerts) SPECIAL 3-CONCERT TICKET: €45 / €35 (any three concerts) Full-time students: €7 ticket for each concert Tickets for The Cello Goes Baroque also available at www.tht.ie

PROGRAMME Saturday, May 16 Exhibitions on all day in The Print Works 12:00 pm

Thrice Upon a Time!

Moonfish Theatre The Loft, Seven Bridge St

1:00 pm

The Cello Goes Baroque Aoife Nic Athlaoich & Yonit Kosovske St Nicholas Collegiate Church €12 / €10 concession / €7 Full-time student

2:30 4:00 pm

Suspended in Time Talk & Demonstration Simon & Maria O’Dwyer, Ancient Music Irealnd

The Print Works Fragments for the End of Time Sequentia An Taibhdhearc

8:00 pm

€18 / €14 concession / €7 Full-time student

Sunday, May 11 Exhibitions on all day in The Print Works 12:00 pm

Slip Slidin’ Away Trumpas, trombones and sackbuts sifting through the sands of time

Pandora’s Box and Ancient Music Ireland 1:30 pm

Dance Workshop

With GEM dancers and musicians The Print Works 4:00 pm

Time Warp!

Alphabet Baroque Club The Print Works

€15 / €10 concession / €7 Full-time student

Venue Map

1. The Print Works 2. St Nicholas Collegiate Church

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3. An Taibhdhearc 4. The Loft, Seven Bridge St

A

Shor t history

Galway Early Music was founded when a group of Galway musicians travelled to Lismore, Co Waterford, for the Lismore Early Music Festival.

It was there that the idea was born: why not bring this rich and sometimes exotic music to the medieval city of Galway - what better venue? The first festival was in 1996 and this is our 20th!

Through the years the Festival has been proud to present such exciting ensembles and performers as Jordi Savall, Andrew Lawrence-King and The Harp Consort, Sequentia, Red Priest, Ensemble Unicorn, SiobhĂĄn Armstrong, The Irish Baroque Orchestra, Resurgam, Ensemble eX and many, many more. The Festival is known for its lively programming and its attention to the place of Irish music and musicians in the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque European music scene.

Galway Early Music is run by a voluntary committee and is a member of REMA, The European Early Music Network.

More Information www.galwayearlymusic.com tel. +353-(0)83-461 9039 e-mail: info@galwayearlymusic.com Galway Early Music

@gwy_earlymusic

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