Support Béal Festival

We are really looking forward to the festival next month. We have an amazing lineup of soloists and ensembles performing at the event:

On Friday, singer Iarla Ó Lionáird will join with our vocal group ensembÉal in Eyeless a worked we commissioned from Ailís ní Ríain. ensembÉal, conducted by Orla Flanagan and directed by Andrea Scott will perform six new works, (three of them commissioned by Béal).

On Thursday, Tom Buckner will perform a selection of operas from innovative American composer Robert Ashley.

On Wednesday, ConTempo String Quartet, Tom Johnson, Billy Mills and Elizabeth Hilliard will perform a sequence of works: Haydn’s String Quartet and Tom Johnson’s Formulas for String Quartet will be interspersed by short excerpts from Aperghis’ theatrical Récitations, readings by festival poet Billy Mills and Johnson’s own Sound-Art.

It should be great. Tickets will be available shortly from http://www.smockalley.com.

If you would like to further support this project we would invite you to look at our Friend Scheme.

For €35 Friends will receive:
a festival pass, a complimentary programme and a ticket to a TheOpenRehearsals gig of their choice through 2012 and 2013

for €50 Patrons will receive:
all of the above plus a complimentary drink at the festival

Please send a cheque payable to Béal Festival to 37 Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, including your own contact information with the donation.

If you would like more information on this scheme,
please contact Elizabeth on bealfestival@gmail.com

Press Release

We are pleased to announce our festival line up. Click here for our press release

Festival Commissions

In advance of our official launch of our updated website, we have a little information about our festival commissions.  We were delighted to receive funding from the Arts Council of Ireland to put on our festival – this included money to commission three new works for a vocal ensemble of eight voices.  These will be performed in our festival finale on Friday 9th November at 8 pm.

Our three pieces are:

Tom Johnson: TickTock Rhythms

Billy Mills: Loop Walks

Ailís ní Ríain: Eyeless

Johnson’s work is for speaking chorus , using only the spoken words tick and tock to elucidate a specific combination of patterns of twos and threes.

Mills’ commission will conclude the festival.  Here we have a newly-invented genre of work, polyphonic poetry, also scored for speaking chorus.

Ní Ríain, a putblished playwright in addition to a composer, has written the text of her new work – in addition to this she has worked with Iarla Ó Lionáird to translate it into Irish (using funds provide by the Arts Council of England).  The outcome is a somewhat subversive reflection on the dual traditions of classical and sean nós singing, and through this, a meditation on lost identity.

Béal Festival 2012

We at Béal are looking forward to this year’s festival, taking place over three days
in Dublin in November. We are entranced by the fascinating capacity of words to be both pure sound and a means of communication, and our mission is to explore this in the spoken and sung word. Our festival this year is all about finding alternative ways (no matter how rough and ready) of thinking and experiencing, building alternative combinations of words and music.

Our featured composers this year are Robert Ashley and Tom Johnson. We are delighted to include the European premiere of Ashley’s recent opera World War III Just the Highlights and a newly-commissioned by Johnson for vocal ensemble.

Both composers emerged from the time in American new music when the influences of minimalism and Cagean experimentalism met. Both have in their careers since then gone on to forge individual paths, and are pushing music into new terrain/expanding our aesthetic horizons.

More details will be available soon…..

7th-9th November 2012, Smock Alley Banquet Hall

Tickets: 10 euro / 8 euro (conc) – day tickets, 25 euro festival pass

events from 7 pm on Weds and Thursday with main act at 8.30 pm.  On Friday, a marathon session from 4 pm with the main act at 8 pm.

Call for text-based pieces

Béal Festival, a biennial festival of music and text in Dublin, announce a
call for already-existing pieces or proposals for new pieces. We are
looking for text-based pieces which respond in some way to the work of our
featured composer Robert Ashley. Pieces / proposals in any format will be
considered; the emphasis will be on pieces featuring voice(s) with or
without electronics; it may be feasible to include additional instrumental
forces.

Contact bealfestival@gmail.com by August 15th 2012.

January Mini-Series

January Mini-Series

Béal present two recitals in the National Concert Hall’s Kevin Barry Room by Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano) and David Bremner (piano). Both feature new works specially written for the duo- by Garrett Sholdice and Siobhán Cleary.

The two recitals are somewhat different in mood; the concert on Tuesday 17^th is full of sudden outbursts of colour. It features in addition to the Cleary commission, the world premiere of all of Rhona Clarke’s Five Songs, a seasonal fairytale by Co. Kerry-based Massimo Davi, and the sensuous melancholy of Debussy’s cycle Ariettes Oubliées.

The concert on Tuesday 31^st presents a more rarefied atmosphere. Beside a selection from Schubert’s stark Schwanengesang are placed Garrett Sholdice’s three lieder after franz schubert, Bremner’s monodrama The bright kids (logic ballad), and Webern’s impossibly condensed, compact Vier Lieder.

Tuesday 17th January National Concert Hall Kevin Barry Room 7.30 pm Clarke: Five Songs Cleary: Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire Debussy: Ariettes Oubliées Davi: Non Vera Historia, Sed Ficta Fabula

Tuesday 31st January National Concert Hall Kevin Barry Room 7.30 pm Sholdice: three lieder after franz          schubert Bremner: The bright kids(logic ballad) Webern: Vier Lieder Schubert: from Schwanengesang

Tickets €12/€8 available from the National Concert Hall Box Office (no booking fees)
01 4170000 or online at nch.ie

co-promoted by Béal and National Concert Hall

The open rehearsals – Summer 2011

The open rehearsals present four gigs:

Tues June 21, 8 pm (doors 7.45)
– Christ Church Cathedral, Song School

Wed June 29th, 8 pm (doors 7.30)
– CFCP (Pembroke Street)

Tues July 5, 8 pm (doors 7.45)
– Christ Church Cathedral, Crypt

Tues July 12, 8 pm (doors 7.45)
– Christ Church Cathedral, Crypt.

Tickets: 8 euro / 5 or all three for 15 / 12 in Christ Church, 7.50 or 5 for members at CFCP

byob!

look forward to seeing you there