Day 3: New Movements - Walking (Part 1) Dawn, Day, Dusk: A selection of music by Michael Gallen
Item closed 30 June
Sun 31 May 2020
For most of us, our daily walk has been our way of moving, being physical and interacting with the outside world these past weeks and New Movements offered original compositions to accompany your walk, whatever the time of day.
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Irish composer Michael Gallen has created original music for many dance works. For the DDF Digital Capsule, he shared three compositions to accompany your daily walks – whether as a meditation, exercise, or an exploration of your environment. Each track evoked a different pace and energy. In a time when our movement has been restricted, we encouraged you to listen to these tracks as you observed the subtle movements of the world around you, becoming aware of how our bodies interact with our environment.
All three compositions were available until 30 June, but you can listen to an excerpt from the first in this series here:
DAWN - Difference in Clouds
Difference in Clouds is inspired by the dawn chorus of waking birds - a multitude of melodies merging and emerging as the voice of the breaking day. As this cloud of sound disperses, we hear different, hidden songs - traces of meaning rising from the chaos.
DAY - Saunter (Sudden Wells)
Saunter evokes the feelings of freedom and insight that can come with simply moving our bodies forward through space and time. While we stroll, thoughts pass above us like soaring birds, lifting us beyond difficult times like those in which we are currently living. Kavanagh’s poem considers how the small movements of our day-to-day lives will outlast the surge of great events.
DUSK - The Seed in March
This last piece grows from a sense of the subtle, almost imperceptible movements that occur beneath the surface of a seeming stillness. The seed in March is something at the cusp of becoming - a new possibility unfurling in the darkness, almost breaking forth. In these quieter evenings I have been struck by how the fading sky at dusk can already instill in us the sense of a new light returning.
Michael Gallen is an award-winning Irish composer, writer and performer. Growing up with traditional Irish music and folk song, his work blends contemporary composition with musical language drawn from a uniquely Irish idiom. He is artistic director of music-theatre company Straymaker, and is currently developing a new opera entitled Elsewhere which will premiere in 2021.
Michael’s work has been performed by leading ensembles including the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Contempo Quartet, Crash Ensemble, Miroirs Étendus and Chamber Choir Ireland. He has been involved with several high-profile collaborations in dance and theatre, and is currently touring Session, a new work made with choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Colin Dunne.
Michael is lead singer with Irish band Ana Gog, and performs as a solo pianist under the moniker Sudden Wells.
www.michaeljgallen.com
www.straymaker.com
Credits
DAWN:
Michael Gallen - Difference in Clouds
Performed by Prima Quartet.
First composed in 2014 for TARDIGRADE (Company Philip Connaughton)
DAY:
Michael Gallen - Saunter (Sudden Wells)
Produced by Michael Gallen. Mastered by Simon Cullen.
feat. "Beyond the Headlines" by Patrick Kavanagh, read by John McArdle.
Text from "Beyond the Headlines" by Patrick Kavanagh is taken from "Collected Poems", edited by Antoinette Quinn (Allen Lane 2004), by kind permission of the Trustees of the estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathon Williams Estate.
DUSK:
Michael Gallen - The Seed in March (Sudden Wells)
feat. Aoife Ní Bhríain (fiddle). Recorded by Les Keye at Arad Studios.