Crash Ensemble are Ireland’s ‘foremost contemporary music ensemble’ and they celebrate 20 years in existence this year.
Reflecting on your 20 years of contemporary classical music, how do you think Crash Ensemble has maintained the dynamic and cutting-edge sound it’s so revered for?
Contemporary music is about the future, pushing boundaries, the new and the next. It’s really important to the ensemble to keep moving and evolving. We don’t just play existing repertoire or even commission new work, we look at who we work with, how we present work and engage with audiences.
Over the past summer, CrashLands, your new music project, has crash landed in various spots around the country. How important is space in your musical creations? How much does it inform the kind of sounds you create?
CrashLands was very much about the context. The first CrashLands was on Long Island, West Cork. We performed on the edge of a cliff with the sun setting behind us. The audience came over on the ferry, and when that sold out they took to their own boats and kayaks to make sure they didn’t miss out. We had to learn how to deal with being outdoors, with weather, how this changes how sound travels and communication. It was a challenge that we learned from, after 20 years there is still room for learning and evolving!
The diverse assortment of composers that made up the 20 creators in the CrashLands project is eclectic to say the least. How did you go about curating the composers for the project?
We asked 20 composers to write us new pieces for our birthday. These are composers who have worked with us over the years or who we wanted to work with in the future. They’re composers who we felt say something about the past, present and future of new music and Crash. Of the twenty composers ten are from Ireland and ten are from outside of Ireland.
In choosing these composers from around the world as well as from home, did you draw inspiration from other cultures and if so whom?
Crash is an internationally known group and we see ourselves in that context.
American music has always been deeply important to the ensemble, right from the founding of the ensemble in 1997. Composer and Crash founder, Donnacha Dennehy, had just returned to Ireland after graduate studies at the University of Illinois. He wanted to set up a new type of music ensemble in Ireland, one that was open to the influences from contemporary popular culture, while also deeply committed to the values of serious music endeavour.
American minimal and post-minimal work featured strongly in early programs, introducing Irish audiences to unapologetic pieces such as Philip Glass’s Music in Similar Motion. We have also forged links to Iceland of late. We played Airwaves last year and our latest album came out this year on the Icelandic Bedroom Community label, and we have plans up our sleeves with composer/conductor Daniel Bjarnason.
You’ve collaborated with filmmaker Brendan Canty and poet Doireann Ni Ghríofa for your compositions for CrashLands. Do you think you will continue to challenge the barriers between different art forms?
Absolutely, we are not interested in keeping to our silo, either musically or art form. What matters to us is the quality of the work and in the delivery. We will always produce serious hard-core contemporary music, but we also look around us to see how we can be part of a wider conversation.
In celebration of their 20 birthday, Crash Ensemble will perform all twenty works from CrashLands over two nights at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, with the films from Brendan Canty and readings from Doireann Ní Ghríofa, on Friday November 24 and Saturday November 25.
CrashLands, the album will be out in 2018.
