On January 6, 2010, Garrett Sholdice will contribute work to Sensorium, a three-hour performance/installation event taking place in the Guildhall in York.

The brainchild of The Link Project (Angie Atmadjaja, Emily Kalies and Judith Ring), Sensorium is a diverse evening of interactive visual and aural installation works designed to ignite and stimulate the senses.

The works that will be showcased will cover a wide range of genres, from live performances to pure electronic video works. The evening will feature work by Enrico Bertelli, Theo Burt, Briony Clarke, Melanie Clarke, Angie Atmadjaja, Morga Galloway, Alex Harker, Emily Kalies, Judith Ring, Radoslaw Rudnicki, Cindy Tong and Tim Wright.

Garrett Sholdice will contribute four works: three versions of Trio # 2 (2008), performed by the composers’ own ensemble Harmonium (Jonathan Sage, saxophone/clarinets; Michelle O’Rourke, voice; Garrett Sholdice, electric guitar/piano/radio) and Soundscape in Movement, a recent collaboration with Danish choreographer Silja Thomsen featuring music for tape and clarinet (performed by Jonathan Sage).

Sensorium
7-10pm, 6 January 2010
Guildhall, York, YO1 9QN, UK
Admission: £5, £3 concessionary fee
Licensed bar at the venue. Audience can enter and leave as they wish.

www.sensorium-york.com

Ergodos Voices

National Concert Hall
5 December 2009, 8:30pm
Tickets €12/€9. Reserve tickets here.

Peyee Chen (soprano), Marja Liisa Kay (soprano), Michelle O’Rourke (mezzo soprano), Robin Bier (alto)

Ergodos Voices is a brazen new, all-amplified, all-female vocal quartet. The group have been working for months on five new works by Irish composers, nearly all commissioned by Ergodos. It’s a programme that covers the broad reach of human experience, often passionate, sometimes calm, sometimes rough, sometimes nostalgic, but always beautiful: Linda Buckley sets an Icelandic paean to the earth; Judith Ring finds beauty in the detail of a woman’s voice; Garrett Sholdice looks for the delicate stillness of the medieval masters and Seán Clancy exposes the theatre of our voyeurist and celebrity obsessed culture. Benedict Schlepper-Connolly binds these works with interludes from from his work The Sun Also Rises, a work which is entirely about optimism, and which features projections of 8mm film.

Programme
Linda Buckley – Núrarimur
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly – Four Interludes from The Sun Also Rises
Garrett Sholdice – For Magister Léonin
Seán Clancy – Comedias Nuevas
Judith Ring – Mouthpiece

www.ergodos.ie

Thomas Tallis

At 1pm on Thursday 5 November, in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall in the University of York, brand new ensemble Harmonium will give their debut concert — a short recital of music by Thomas Tallis and John Cage, alongside Ergodos-commissioned works by Scott McLaughlin and Garrett Sholdice, and Aria from The Sun Also Rises by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, in an arrangement made specifically for the group by the composer.

The ensemble line-up is: Garrett Sholdice (piano, artistic director), Jonathan Sage (clarinet), Michelle O’Rourke (mezzo-soprano) and Scott McLaughlin (cello). Admission is free.

Also at 1pm, on Saturday 7 November, in the Unitarian Chapel, St. Saviourgate, York, London-based pianist Rika Zayasu will premiere Garrett Sholdice’s Prelude # 4 for solo piano. Prelude # 4 is based on a fragment from O ye tender babes, a short, elegant keyboard piece by Thomas Tallis.

This concert is part of the very fine Late Music Concert Series.

At 20.30 on Wednesday 23 September, Ergodos will present the acclaimed duo of Maya Homburger (Baroque violin) and Barry Guy (double bass) in concert in St Audeon’s Church, Dublin 8.

This will be a very special concert with music by Heinrich Ignaz Biber (from the spell-binding Mystery Sonatas of 1676), excerpts from Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous solo violin sonatas, improvisations and compositions by Barry Guy himself, as well as three brand new commissioned works by Irish composers Garrett Sholdice, Simon O’Connor and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly.

Check out Homburger/Guy performing some pretty fabulous Biber here.

St Audeon’s is a very intimate little church and ticket numbers are strictly limited, so booking is highly recommended. Tickets at €15/€10 can be booked here.

www.ergodos.ie

www.maya-recordings.com

Composer and Gamelan Sekar Petak director Neil Sorrell playing Javanese kendhang ketipung and kendhang ageng.

Garrett Sholdice’s …silent, listening to the air becoming no air becoming air again for two ‘cellos and Javanese gamelan will recieve a second performance this Wednesday (27 May 2009). Gamelan Sekar Petak with James Whittle and Chris Mullender, ‘cellos, will perform the work as part of a Gamelan Sekar Petak concert in the Jack Lyons Concert Hall at the University of York. The programme will also feature the shakuhachi playing of Joe Browning, dancers from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, and music by Clive Wilkinson, Neil Sorrell, Francis Heery, John Jacobs and Emily Crossland.

A Chimera Ensemble concert in York on Friday 26 June (2009) will also see the third performance of Garrett’s In Memoriam Hunter S. Thompson, a work for 2 electric guitars with digital delay units.

Details for both concerts are here: http://music.york.ac.uk/concerts

Directed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Garrett Sholdice, the Ergodos Festival runs in Dublin from the 17th ’til the 25th of April. A radical, non-genre-specific celebration of music, the festival features performances by Gamelan Sekar Petak, Joe Browning, Trio Scordatura, Salil Sachdev, Jonathan Nangle, Linda Buckley, Jonathan Sage, Judith Ring, Enda Bates, Michelle O’Rourke, Morla, Paul G. Smyth, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Expressway to Yr. Skull, the Ergodos Orchestra and the Gong Agenda. There’ll also be two performances of works by Garrett Sholdice — a new work for 2 ‘cellos and gamelan and revised version of his 2005 Electric Guitar Quartet. Full details at www.ergodos.ie .

Trio Scordatura

This December will see three first performances of three pieces of diverse instrumentation:

On Thursday December 11, the Gong Agenda (a gamelan quartet of Emily Crossland, Peter Moran, Ed Crooks and Garrett Sholdice) will perform Garrett Sholdice’s …as one chooses shells while walking along a beach alongside Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditation XXI as part of a Gamelan Sekar Pethak concert in York Cemetary Chapel. Full details are here.

On Friday December 12, the Chimera Ensemble will perform Garrett’s nonet, a 12-minute work for three percussionists, two ‘cellists, two clarinettists and two trombonists alongside music by Scottish composers and music by other U of Y composers. Details are here.

On Tuesday December 16, in Muziekcentrum de Badcuyp, Amsterdam, Ergodos will present Amsterdam-based microtonal music specialists Trio Scordatura (Bob Gilmore, keyboard; Elisabeth Smalt, violas; Alfrun Schmid, mezzo-soprano) in a concert of newly composed pieces by Irish composers Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, Peter Moran, Judith Ring, Enda Bates, Scott McLaughlin, Linda Buckley and Garrett Sholdice. Garrett Sholdice’s fliehen/nehmen for Adapted Viola, mezzo-soprano and tunable synthesizer (doubling transistor radio) will receive its first performance. More info is here. Gig details are here.

Jonathan Sage

This coming November Ergodos will present young, up-and-coming English clarinetist Jonathan Sage in a tour of Ireland.

The diverse and exciting tour programme features a new work for basset clarinet (an 18th-century extended clarinet) and tape by Garrett Sholdice; specially-commissioned works for clarinet and electronics by English composer Alex Harker and prize-winning Irish composer Jonathan Nangle (funded by the Irish Arts Council); miniatures by Irish composer Amanda Feery and American clarinetist-composers Evan Ziporyn (of NYC’s Bang-On-A-Can All Stars) and William O. Smith and pillars of contemporary solo clarinet repertoire such as Elliot Carter’s Gra and movements from the late Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Amour.

Full details of tour dates are on the concerts page.

Ensemble ICC

If you happen to be in Cork or Dublin during the week of the 13th October, come along to the second pair of concerts of music by Irish Composers Collective members performed by the newly-formed Ensemble ICC. Ensemble ICC will perform Garrett Sholdice’s brand new piece, The Echo Is The Best Sort of Glorifying, as well as music by Enda Bates, Karen Power, Jennifer Kelly, Aengus Ó Maoláin, Seán Clancy, Jonathan Nangle, Dylan Rynhart & Brian Ledwidge Flynn in both Cork and Dublin. Gig details for both shows are below. For further information, go to http://www.irishcomposerscollective.org/.

Ensemble ICC in Cork
Date | 13 October 2008
Time | 8pm
Venue | Aula Maxima, UCC, Cork (www.ucc.ie)
Tickets | €12/8 from www.tickets.ie

Ensemble ICC in Dublin
Date | 15 October 2008
Time | 8pm
Venue | Unitarian Church, 112 St Stephen’s Green West, Dublin 2 (www.unitarianchurchdublin.org)
Tickets | €12/8 from www.tickets.ie

Joseph Kubera and Michael Byron in Dante’s cafe, NYC

In Dublin on Saturday October 4th, Ergodos (the music company directed by Garrett Sholdice and composer Benedict Schlepper-Connolly) will present ‘Dreamers of Pearl’, a concert of two large-scale piano works performed by legendary New York pianist Joseph Kubera. Dublin audiences will hear Kubera performing Dreamers of Pearl, a true masterpiece of 21st century music by the composer Michael Byron, a fellow New Yorker, and Ekstase IV by Dubliner Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, specially composed for the occasion. The concert will take place at 8pm in the Unitarian Church, 112 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2. At 2pm that same day, renowned Irish musicologist Bob Gilmore will conduct a public interview with composer Michael Byron in the Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. Tickets for the concert, priced €15 and €10, are available from www.tickets.ie. Admission to the public interview will be free. ‘Dreamers of Pearl’ is supported by a Small Festivals Award from the Irish Arts Council.

For more details, and to download a press pack, go to www.ergodos.ie.