Hugh Lane Gallery Concert – Sunday 25th April, 12 pm

Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano) and David Bremner (piano)

Tarik O’Regan: Hold This City All Night

Nadia Boulanger: Heures Ternes

Soleils Couchants

Samantha Fernando: Sissay Settings

Nadia Boulanger: Le Beau Navire

Soir d’Hiver

Seoirse Bodley: Tuning in

Rondo for Eamon

A Star on the Eve

Love-Song

(all from his cycle ‘The Naked Flame’)

Elizabeth Hilliard is a singer based in Dublin. She is widely regarded as an exceptional performer, and an imaginative and dramatic communicator, of new music. She works in close collaboration with Christopher Fox, Jennifer Walshe, Gráinne Mulvey and David Bremner, and is considered an authoritative interpreter of their vocal music. She has been supported in her career with bursaries and residencies from the Arts Council / An Comhairle Ealaíon, Creative Ireland, South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Current projects include a collaboration with Louise Manifold (video artist), they most recently developed a video installation The Escape Wheel, a work based on the performance, mechanism, design and action of Jacques-Droz Automata (exhibited at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon and Depo, Istanbul) an algorithmic screen-share text improv collaboration and an experimental opera, Slow Recognition, both with composer David Bremner, and development of scenes by composer Evangelia Rigaki with text by Marina Carr as part of the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland CMC Colleagues scheme.

2021 performances include the world premiere of Gráinne Mulvey’s Great Women at the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival (June 2021); St. Brigid's Day 2021 celebration presented by CMC and Irish Embassy, Hungary performing Gráinne Mulvey’s Carlow Song-Cycle with guitarist Anselm McDonnell (February 2021); a song recital with pianist David Bremner for the Finding A Voice Festival featuring songs by Nadia Boulanger and Rhona Clarke (March 2021); a solo live-stream recital featuring works by Enno Poppe, Chaya Czernowin, Steven Daverson and Os Ard, the Irish language version of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate collected in Jennifer Walshe’s aisteach.org archive (July 2021).

Highlights of her career to date include: An invitation to London with the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland to perform in both The Irish Embassy in London and Cafe OTO for the 2018 launch of CMC’s promotional album new music::new Ireland three, presentation of and musical director of Béal 2016, a 2-day festival of the unaccompanied vocal-ensemble music by Jennifer Walshe, including the Irish premiere of much of her music and a newly-commissioned work.

Her debut album Sea to the West in 2016 was acclaimed by Colin Clarke in Fanfare Archive as 'a highly specialized but massively rewarding disc’. She performed in Jennifer Walshe's Ireland: A Dataset in the Imagining Ireland series live-streamed by the National Concert Hall of Ireland, which was highlighted by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as one of the Top 10 Performances of 2020. www.elizabethhilliard.com

David Bremner is a pianist, composer and organist based in Dublin. Originally from West Cumbria, UK, he moved to Ireland in 1999. He has studied piano with Mary Lennon, and organ with David Sanger and Mark Duley. David has performed with many of Dublin’s leading ensembles, including the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Crash Ensemble. From 2010 to 2019 he was Assistant Organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. In 2013 he completed a Ph.D in Composition with Gráinne Mulvey at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (now TU Dublin Conservatoire), where he now lectures in Composition.

He gives recitals regularly, both as a soloist, and as a duo with soprano Elizabeth Hilliard. In 2013-16 he performed in three series mounted by the Association of Irish Composers. Other recent performances include Sonic Vigil, Temple Bar TradFest, and Dún Laoghaire Organ Concerts.

David co-directs the music/text production company Béal, and is active as a composer; recent projects include a work for Crash Ensemble, a cantata on the theme of the four seasons, and a duo for Elizabeth Hilliard and Lina Andonovska. www.davidbremner.net

Tarik O’Regan

2020/21 sees the release of three albums of O’Regan’s compositions: Pentatone brings out Houston Grand Opera’s production of The Phoenix, in which Thomas Hampson and Luca Pisaroni both interpret the role of Lorenzo Da Ponte; on Naxos, Chamber Choir Ireland and the Irish Chamber Orchestra perform A Letter of Rights, a large-scale collaboration with Alice Goodman which meditates on the civil rights enshrined in Magna Carta; and All Things Common is a portrait album by Pacific Chorale on the Yarlung label.

He is currently working on a saxophone concerto, which has been commissioned for soloist Amy Dickson by the Presteigne Festival to be premiered in 2022.

Born in 1978, Tarik O’Regan has worked with a wide variety of ensembles and organizations; these include the Dutch National Ballet, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House in London.

His output, recognized with two GRAMMY® nominations and two British Composer Awards, has been recorded on over 40 albums and is published exclusively by Novello. O’Regan also holds the positions of Visiting Artist at Stanford University and Artistic Partner with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. www.tarikoregan.com

Samantha Fernando

Samantha (b.1984) has worked with numerous ensembles including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Riot Ensemble, the choir of Selwyn College Cambridge, LOD Muziektheater (Ghent), Silbersee Vocal Ensemble (Amsterdam) and The London Sinfonietta. Her music has been performed at festivals here and abroad such as Aldeburgh Music, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sounds New, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, York Late Music, Lake District Summer Music and The Oxford Lieder Festival.

In 2013, she was awarded an RPS Composition Prize and was commissioned to write a new work for the Philharmonia Orchestra as part of the Music of Today series. Samantha’s music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and her flute piece Kinesphere was released on NMC last year. Last year she was commissioned to write a new work celebrating the 50th birthday of the London Sinfonietta, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in January 2018 and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. In June 2018, her music was showcased in a portrait concert at Kettle’s Yard Cambridge.

In 2019 her work Formations was choreographed by Kristen McNally and performed by the Royal Ballet in a showcase of new dance at the Linbury Theatre, ROH. Breathing Space for symphony orchestra was premiered by the Philharmonia Orchestra in Spring 2019, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Recent commissions include a new work for the BBC Singers and a hyper VR opera, directed by Netia Jones, designed by Jo Scotcher and produced by the Royal Opera House and Figment Productions. Samantha is a 2021 Arts Foundation Finalist. www.samanthafernando.com

Seoirse Bodley

Seóirse Bodley was born in Dublin in 1933. Studies in Ireland and Germany led to a teaching appointment at University College Dublin, where he was awarded the degree of D. Mus. He is currently Emeritus Professor in the music department there.

Influences on his compositions include a range of musical styles from the European avant-garde to Irish traditional music. His works include five symphonies for full orchestra, two chamber symphonies and numerous orchestral, choral, vocal and chamber pieces. The many commissions he has received include his Third Symphony, commissioned for the opening of the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and his Fourth Symphony, commissioned by the Arturo Toscanini Symphony Orchestra of Parma, Italy. In addition to many performances in Ireland, his music has been broadcast and performed in North America, many European countries, Australia and China. Awards include the Arts Council Prize for Composition, a Travelling Studentship of the National University of Ireland, the Macaulay Fellowship in Music Composition and the Marten Toonder Award. In 2008 Seóirse Bodley was elected a Saoi of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists.

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger (1887 – 1979) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were those who became leading composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Eliot Carter, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Astor Piazzolla.

Boulanger taught in the US and England, working with music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92.

Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and EuropeShe conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky. Hold this city all night (texts by Alice Goodman)

I.

To Peter, who is painting a map of the world The day turns as it did from five o’clock Sunday when light built angles on your wall corn blades clicked on the fire escape wind bent all Boston’s roses

To seven in June, the hour that is so much ike you. Air cuts through buildings and thickens. The grass’s bristling shadow Is stronger than the body of a man. So we marked off the map

Of the city, from the Record Café mulberry and slate, down Clarendon, Tremont, Charles – all inked lines – to the river. Oh the light follows clear and precise as a plummet

To where muezzins call the pigeons down by minutes, by degrees. The children stop, cats slide into night. Sardis behind, you cross the violet square to your attic. Oh it is all the same: the square, the crystal, the hour you paint

In perfect colors. Here my map’s a grid, Draughtsman, the day turns still and you are gone.

The Roger Conant Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry, 1977-1978, Harvard University

II. Excerpt from The Chemical Blonde It’s the same now. If I were to move one foot Half an inch the shadow would change And at seven o’clock my legs Are hard and cool as plaster and half gray. Across York Avenue Someone raises a sash, ruffles an organdie curtain. It should be summer and in that room A maze of dust and paintings, a dry fern And the cards on the table-cloth. Outside the window a neighbour Hangs out her sheets between iron pipes In the yard of the same brick apartment. We forget the city sometimes. It should be summer. A low pressure system moves across the Midwest Pushing yesterday’s warm front out to sea. The forecast is for rain.

Poetry Magazine, February 1982, p. 253

III. As with the commander of an army, so is it with the mistress of a house

Now the maid, having set the plates for breakfast, puts out the light and climbs down to her cot. Now the mouse drops to the pantry floor and begins to chew. Now the beetle with his camphor wings snaps his elytra at the bottom of the woodpile. Ice covers the house like ribs of candle-wax. Now the cattle begin to lie down in the street, and rest their heads upon each other’s backs. Now there is an army camped before the walls. Late as it is their fires are lit. Hold this city all night.

London Review of Books, Vol. 3 No. 22/23, 3 December 1981, p. 28

Heures Ternes (Maeterlinck) Weary Hours (translation by Emily Ezust)

Voici d’anciens désirs qui passent, Here are old desires that fade, Encor des songes de lassés, More dreams of the weary, Encor des rêves qui se lassent ; More dreams that bore us; Voilà les jours d’espoir passés ! Those hopeful days are gone!

En qui faut-il fuir aujourd’hui ! To where can we flee on such a day? Il n’y a plus d’étoile aucune : There are no more stars: Mais de la glace sur l’ennui Only ennui beneath a crust of ice Et des linges bleus sous la lune. And beneath the moon, sheets of blue.

Encor des sanglots pris au piège ! More sobs trapped! Voyez les malades sans feu, Look at the ill without fire, Et les agneaux brouter la neige ; And the lambs grazing on snow; Ayez pitié de tout, mon Dieu ! Have pity on us all, my God!

Moi, j’attends un peu de réveil, As for me, I wait for the awakening call; Moi, j’attends que le sommeil passe, I wait for sleep to pass, Moi, j’attends un peu de soleil I wait for a little sunlight Sur mes mains que la lune glace. To fall on my hands frozen by the moon.

Soleils Couchants (Verlaine) Sunset (translation by David and Emily Wyatt)

Une aube affaiblie Enfeebled dawn Verse par les champs Pours through the fields La mélancolie The melancholy Des soleils couchants. Of setting suns. La mélancolie The melancholy Berce de doux chants Cradles with its sweet songs Mon cœur qui s'oublie My heart, forgetful Aux soleils couchants. Of setting suns. Et d'étranges rêves, And in strange dreams, Comme des soleils Like suns Couchants sur les grèves, Setting on the strand, Fantômes vermeils, Crimson phantoms Défilent sans trêves, File by without pause, Défilent, pareils File by, equalling Great suns À des grands soleils Couchants sur les grèves. Setting on the strand.

Settings of poems by Lemn Sissay. Commissioned by York Late Music, February 2016.

1.Walking in Circles 2.Dance (solo piano) 3.The Falling Summer 4.Dance Again

Walking in Circles- sile innat These compressed patches of earth. Her footsteps deepened And I found myself, raising my knee To follow in them, Raising my elbows To climb over them, Bracing myself To jump in them. Who was she That left imprints Deeper than myself? Wiping sweat from the crease Between cheek and nose With a dirty hand I Mumble why so deep Wait for me. Why so deep? Later I realised That without meeting We’d been walking In circles, stamping our imprints. Every now and then I would Hear her wheezing trying to climb Over her own imprint And jump into the next.

The Falling Summer Bette: 1955-1997 I will not fall into fall on the breeze of grief Pushed slightly to me from your last breath. I will not let winter dull the memory That you so caringly carefully left I cannot leave you roses each day But will lay down fresh dew each night. I will leave you love in each leaf of fall And each dawn a bed of light.

Dance Again from Charlie’s Playing Blackjack Rise And flow like mercurial contours on a midnight sky. Cry. Till the tears solidify. Fly Spirits till you become a song. Eye to eye. Right to wrong. Untie pain. Dance again

Le Beau Navire (Georges Delaquys) The Beautiful Ship (translation by E Hilliard)

Le beau navire au rêve clair The beautiful ship in a clear dream Porte son espoir sur la mer Carries its hope on the sea Comme un fanal à son étrave. Like a beacon on its bough Au loin, le ciel est plein d’extase From far, the sky is full of ectasy Et de féerie et plein de jour, And of magic the whole day Et c’est mon âme qui s’embrase And my soul is ablaze Et défaille vers tant d’amour; And falters towards such love Mon âme seule qui désire My lone soul that desires A toutes voiles, son reveil, In full sail its awakening Et qui luit comme un beau navire, And which is lit like the beautiful boat Dans le sillage du soleil! In the wake of the sun Prends-la cette âme illuminée Take this illumined soul Et prends aussi, prends à pleins bras And take also with full arms Ainsi le veut la destinée Such does destiny desire Ma vie a jamais entraînée. My life naturally Vers toi qui m’appelle là-bas! Pulls to you who call me from afar

Soir d’Hiver (Nadia Boulanger) Winter Evening (translation by Laura Claycomb) Une jeune femme berce son enfant. A young woman rocks her child. Elle est seule, elle pleure, mais elle chante, She's alone, she weeps, but she sings, Car il faut bien qu'il entende For he has to hear la chanson douce et tendre pour qu'il the sweet and tender song, so he'll fall asleep. s'endorme. "Christmas is here, my little child of blue.The "Voici Noël, mon petit enfant bleu. bells will ring, Les cloches sonneront bringing happiness to you." pour que tu sois joyeux." The man she loves has gone... Celui qu'elle aime est parti... and the song stops! et la chanson s'arrête! She says: Elle dit: "Where is he now? "Où est-il à cette heure? Does he hear my voice? Entend-il ma voix? and does he know that I'm alive?" et sait-il que je vis?" She weeps so simply Elle pleure si simplement that it makes her heart hurt. que le coeur en a mal. She gazes at her son Elle regarde son fils and sees if he resembles et cherche s'il ressemble the one for whom she waits untiringly, à celui qu'elle attend inlassablement, with all her soul, with all her tenderness! de toute son âme, de toute sa tendresse! She weeps, but she hopes! Elle pleure, mais elle espère! She hears Victory from afar, Elle entend de loin la Victoire, she guesses it's a thankless struggle, elle devine la lutte sans merci, yet she believes in Justice, mais elle croit à la Justice, she knows that a whole life, happy and proud, elle sait que toute une vie s'est donnée, has been given over, and she waits next to this joyeuse et fière, et elle attend, tiny cradle, Auprès de ce berceau si petit, that holds a man's heart. qui tient le coeur d'un homme.

From The Naked Flame by Micheal O’Siadhail

1.

Tuning In

Nothing will stay still. You stretch to touch but cannot catch, just graze it as it slips out of reach, yet savour it as it passes, at once an aftertaste that shakes the buds of memory or foretaste of eternities to come. Look, there is the marvel! But as you look, you look behind, beside, between, beyond. The lush sumac hides crimson and banana hues, fragrances remind both of bygones and tomorrow, in the crow’s foot and furrow dimpled children smile, genes bloom, eons glide between your butter-fingers – have you so outgrown the age of time? Prod of insight or knock on sanity’s wall Scorch of wisdom’s love or lure of madness! A little quietude you ask, yet not the balance that finds a point of equilibrium.

Rather choose the tense delight that knows tug of was, pull of will-be, that is the calm of motion you desire. Always all hovers in its changing, every instant’s gene pivots possibilities, midpoints, diminished chords that poise between tonalities. You strike the moment’s note, then overtone over overtone ascends in fractions to where all honest notes gather and are one infinitude. Listen, listen to the silence!

2.

Rondo for Eamon

Again that gangly earnestness. ‘Actually, here’s another I drew’ as I admire, dreamily a question; ‘You know that painter you knew,

‘had he a studio?’ a quaver in the tones triggers my subconscious; I too am twelve, all eager; A bearded artist primes a canvas.

I watch, gauche with enquiry. ‘o no!’, he said, ‘my father disapproved but when he died I found my notices neatly folded in his wallet, the good words circled in red’ – a posthumous boost filling those voids, years of unworded praise.

‘Where was his studio!’ A rondo; now it’s my turn to respond, conscious that each syllable may float a seed in the wind;

‘on the seafront, so he saw each morning a northern headland, for years just kept drawing that line in every weather’.

Is this the thrill of lineage! I grow young in your ardour; then crossing to soon your bridges, fear those agonies in the garden.

You nod, frowning a little; Lightly the talk changes course. I pretend not to notice the first tremble of manhood in your voice.

4.

A Toast on the Eve

Where is the star that winks in the east? In this the nadir of the year, we sense the drag of time. For a while deceased friends trouble us – a glum roundabout of memory. O beg a freshborn innocence, some star to blink beyond a doubt.

Where is the star that signals in the east! Tonight I am both adult and child; I shape and plan and still am an unleased tenant of my clay, never mistress of my history. Ambitious and humble, I am reconciled to bear this double witness to a mystery.

Where is the star that beckons to the east, that God come down to bless the flesh of living? O give us the daily yeast to burble through the veins and charm our sour grapes into wine. Find me the creche where a God is cradled by woman’s arm.

Where is the star that dances in the east? Son of Ghost and Virgin forgive our meagre welcome. Busy in the inns we feast your arrival cribbed between the ox and ass. O give us our innocence, all green and eager. To the God of renewal, I raise this glass.

8.

Love-Song

In early spring, talk still young and highflown, we laughed, there was an endless time to flirt and toy with the fable of a year. A snowdrop afloat in an old wineglass on our table, already grown tumid with water, lifted the panels of her skirt to show the pale green hem of her petticoat.

Soon we are strolling along the edge of a bay Kicking over the smudged traces of an early swimmer. It’s deep into June; summer lush and unplanned Rocks us in its lazy arms. In the blaze of day we paddle in the shallows; I watch as through a shimmer of water the sun doodles honeycombs in the sand.

A year tilts into autumn; after its madcap race the Russian vine issues its manifesto, a spray of flower; the sun sloping in humility smiles its frail approval as old men wrap against the chill. At last I think I know half of what we love is love’s fragility.

On a winter evening as I turn into our street, I hurry to see the rim of light that fingers around the curtain’s edge to tell you’re home. You open the door and I sense as we meet our moment’s wonder. A scent lingers; I breathe deeply to feed my memory’s honeycomb.