18 Apr. 2010, 12:30pm
Concert 4: Sacred Chants
€10/8 / The final concert of the 2010 Sligo New Music Festival is a short concert of Sacred Chants, composed and performed by soloist Seán Óg.
Sacred Chants is a new performance piece for solo saxophone and electronics based on the beautiful sacred chants of Hildegard von Bingen, G.I. Gurdjieff and sacred Irish music. The centuries old tradition of church and sacred music provides a rich seam of atmospheric melodies and mesmeric improvisations. The sources chosen here represent the long adorned melodies of Gregorian chant, Seán’s own compositions and melodies from Asia Minor and the fringes of Europe.
Concert Programme
Seán Óg: Sacred Chants (40’) Seán Óg
Artist
Curator
Part of
In This Series
- 16 Apr: Opening Concert: Bryars, Dennehy, Morla
- 17 Apr: Concert 3: Lyons, Schnittke, Morla
- 17 Apr: Concert 2: Gavin Bryars
From the Blog
Featuring
Seán Óg is a performer, composer and bandleader based in Dublin. Recognised
predominantly as an alto saxophonist he also plays a range of woodwind instruments as well as invented instruments and electronics. Óg’s music sits at the crossroads between free improvisation, avant-garde composition, and contemporary jazz. A much in demand player on the Irish scene, he leads his group Trihornophone along with free improvisation trio CLOG and Morla amongst other projects. He is a member of The Kaum Quartet, a unique group featuring alto saxophonists Hayden Chisholm, Frank Gratkowski and Christian Weidner.
“He brings a forceful mixture of irreverence and seriousness to his projects.” – Journal of Music in Ireland.
Recent highlight include festival performances with Morla at 12 Points!
representing Ireland, The Foligno Jazz Festival opening for European trumpet icon
Enrico Rava and at The Kilkenny Arts Festival with special guest Caoimhín Ó
Raghallaigh. Seán performed at The Venice Biennale ’09 and The Bottlenote Festival ’09. Seán composed new music for Medea/Medea a new piece by director Dylan Tighe at The Gate Theatre, London. His new music based on the poetry of G.M. Hopkins for boys choir and electronics was presented at The Dublin Theatre Festival 2009 in a radical theatre production. Seán is involved in a number of ongoing interdisciplinary projects in theatre, dance and installation.
Óg has performed at festivals in Greece, Italy, United Kingdom, Belgium. In Ireland he has performed at The Festival of World Cultures, Cork Jazz Festival, Bray Jazz Festival, i & e festival, OUT OF SITE and DEAF amongst others. In 2007 his group Trihornophone won Music Network’s Young Musicwide Award, Seán was awarded the 2008 Cork Jazz Festival Best Young Irish Artist Award. In 2009 Dublin Institute of Technology awarded him the ABBEST Scholarship to undertake a practice-based PhD in advanced woodwind performance techniques. He is a founder member of Bottlenote, a collective of creative musicians working in improvised and new music. His work has been released on a range of international labels.
Ian Wilson was born in Belfast in 1964 and obtained the first DPhil in composition to be awarded by the University of Ulster which, in 1993, commissioned his orchestral work Rise in celebration of the tenth anniversary of its foundation. His music has been performed and broadcast on six continents by artists such as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Ulster, Belgrade Philharmonic and Norwegian Radio Orchestras, the London Mozart Players and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Artis, Callino, Carducci and Vanbrugh Quartets, Argento and Avanti! ensembles, Catherine Leonard and Hugh Tinney. Works have been performed at many festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale, ISCM World Music Days, the Brighton, Cheltenham, Spitalfields and Bath Festivals and the Ultima Festival in Oslo, where Running, Thinking, Finding for orchestra received the composition prize in 1991.
He has written over eighty pieces including two chamber operas, concertos for organ, cello, alto saxophone, violin (three), marimba and piano, orchestral pieces, eight string quartets and many other chamber, vocal and multi-media works.
In 1992 Ian Wilson was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship administered by the Arts Council of Ireland, and in 1998 he was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s State-sponsored body of creative artists. From 2000 to 2003 Ian Wilson was AHRB Research Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Ulster. Since 2002 he has been director of the Sligo New Music Festival, and from 2006-2009 he is Composer-in-Association with California’s Camerata Pacifica ensemble.
His music is published by Ricordi London and Universal Edition.