Sundays at Noon Concert Catch-up : Stone Drawn Circles

Filmed in the Sculpture hall of the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin on 12th May 2024
Stone Drawn Circles
Michelle O’Rourke - voice
Lina Andonovska - flutes
Nathan Sherman - viola
Úna Monaghan - harp/sound design
Alex Petcu - percussion
Caimin Gilmore - double bass
Fearless interpreters of new music, Stone Drawn Circles are newcomers to the burgeoning Irish contemporary music scene. Artist-led, the ensemble features players from groups including Eighth Blackbird, stargaze, Crash Ensemble and Ergodos Musicians. Equally at ease with complexity as they are in graphic scoring and improvisation, Stone Drawn Circles are a collective of risk-takers and sonic explorers. They have already drawn international attention, with Director of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK) Graham McKenzie noting them in his ‘Hidden Gems’ of the 2023 festival, describing Stone Drawn Circles as “a bit of a supergroup within new music circles in Ireland. One look at the repertoire they serve up here gives credence to that viewpoint…”
PROGRAMME
Úna Monaghan (Northern Ireland, 1983) In Formation (2023)
Cat Hope (Australia, 1966) Landay Sequenzas (2022)
Nicole Lizée (Canada, 1973) Peril Earrings (2023)
Brian Irvine (Northern Ireland, 1965), A Call To Arms (2024)
Programme notes
Úna Monaghan (Ireland, 1983) In Formation (2023)
A piece investigating at least four things at once: how a musician comes to be, what we carry with us, band dynamics, and humour.
At the start, try to be like others. Take on feedback and norms, criticism, teaching and invitations. Try to fit in. Then try to strike out. Do a job while building a team. How does a new ensemble form? How can they learn to fly in formation? The reviews and the output keep scrolling. You are the pilot and the plane. Is it possible to be light-hearted, to be curious and to laugh, flying in this red sky? While the information rushes past?
Úna Monaghan, with Emily DeDakis and Stone Drawn Circles
Cat Hope (Australia, 1966) Landay Sequenzas (2022)
This piece consists of five English translations of Afghan Landays set to music. The Landay is an Afghan form of poetry consisting of a single couplet in Pashto, one of two national languages of Afghanistan. Commonly shared orally amongst Pashtan women, they are sung aloud, sometimes with the beat of a hand drum. They typically address themes of love, grief, homeland, war, and separation. Like all music, they were banned by the Taliban during 1996 - 2001, and likely again now given the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Landays are rebellious and powerful, belying the notion of Afghan women as submissive or defeated. They are strong, resilient, pollical, creative and rebellious. The graphic scores are made by tracing over a photographs of Afghan women under an aircraft, from a photograph by Seamus Murphy. The work explores the potential of graphic notation to reflect or ‘contain’ certain aural (oral) traditions that may evolve of time. The Landays are translated into English by Eliza Griswold.
Nicole Lizée (Canada, 1973) Peril Earrings (2023)
Ill-defined. A decrepit stream-of-consciousness hymnal with redacted or erased pages. Hook rug art made of existential crises. Sing-along choruses with intrusive thoughts. Jellied salads made of curious dread. Mania. Doom. Doldrums. Side 1 of Kate Bush’s The Dreaming. The opening verse of Love’s The Red Telephone. The entirety of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Demons. Reapers. It’s fine.
"We let the weirdness in.”
Kate Bush: Leave it Open, The Dreaming
Brian Irvine (Northern Ireland, 1965), A Call To Arms (2024) World PremiereAt the height of the Covid Pandemic UK Conservative peer Michelle Mone together with her financial investor husband Doug Barrowman set up a company called PPE MEDPRO in order to claim £202 million worth of contracts to supply the government with masks and gowns. The contract came about through Mone’s personal connections with the lead minister in the cabinet office Michael Gove. Baroness Mone (as she was then known) continuously denied having any connection with PPE MEDPRO but later admitted to repeatedly lying to the press and to the government about her involvement. The pair personally pocketed over £60 million in profit from the contract with £29 million being deposited directly into Mone’s personal account. The majority of items supplied by PPE MEDPRO proved to be unusable and were destroyed.
A Call To Arms is one of a series of works that explores aspects of contemporary greed. The text is a transcription of a television interview Mone gave with Barrowman and BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg in which she protests: “I don't honestly see there's a case to answer. I can't see what we've done wrong”. Michelle Mone was recently stripped of her Baroness title.
‘A Call To Arms’ by Brian Irvine was commissioned by the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland for Stone Drawn Circles, supported by PRS Foundation Beyond Borders funding.