Press Release No embargo Arvo Pärt’s World Premiere Baltic Voices in Ireland “I love Arvo Pärt’s music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man. He’s completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he’s enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfils a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion.” Steve Reich The Guardian 2004 A new commission from Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, one of the most original musical voices of our time, will receive its world première next February 2008 in Co. Louth. Pärt, one of the most popular and spiritually- oriented of living composers, was commissioned by Eamonn Quinn, Artistic Director of Louth Contemporary Music Society (LCMS) to write a new piece of sacred music using the text of St Patrick’s Breastplate (Christ beside me, Christ within me..).The composer has named the composition The Deer’s Cry. The première will be performed by one of the world’s foremost choirs the Latvian State Choir conducted by Irish conductor Fergus Sheil. The State Choir “Latvija” are the largest professional choir in Latvia. Critic Jorn Florian Fukss named the State Choir Latvija as the best choir of the year. World premières will take place in St Peter’s Church of Ireland, Drogheda, on 13 February 2008 and in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dundalk, on 14 February 2008. Part of the programme will include an interlude of Pärt’s instrumental music performed by Michael McHale, piano and Ioana Petcu Colan, violin. The Irish Times are the print sponsor and RTE lyric fm are going to record the performances for future broadcast. Already, there have been enquiries for tickets from across the globe and LCMS are expecting an international audience. His music has been used in over 50 films, from "Väike motoroller" (1962) to "Promised Land" (2004). The Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten was used in Léos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) and in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 while showing the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City. Spiegel im Spiegel was prominently used in Mike Nichols' Wit (2001), the mountain climbing documentary Touching the Void (2003), and Gus Van Sant's Gerry (2003), which also used Für Alina. In keeping with Louth Contemporary Music Society’s desire to commission new sacred music based on existing Irish texts, there will be further world premières each evening. The Latvian composer Georg Pelecis will set the poem I See His Blood upon the Rose by Joseph Mary Plunkett who is a descendent of the local saint, St Oliver Plunkett. Northern Irish composer Deirdre McKay, a native of Ballynahinch has set the last words of Oliver Plunkett Comendo Spiritum Meum. This text will have an added significance for the people of Drogheda. The concerts will be broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm’s Nova programme, (Sunday evenings, 8pm-10pm, on 96-99fm). Louth Contemporary Music Society acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council in making this event possible. ARVO PÄRT WORLD PREMIÈRE : BALTIC VOICES IN IRELAND: is presented by Louth Contemporary Music Society in association with Dundalk Arts Office, The Louth County Arts Office, Drogheda Arts Office and the Latvian Embassy in Ireland and the Irish Times. ARVO PÄRT WORLD PREMIÈRE : BALTIC VOICES IN IRELAND was funded by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon under its one off project scheme and financially supported by the Drogheda Arts Office, Louth County Arts Office, Dundalk Arts Office and the Embassy of Latvia as part of the celebrations of the 90th Anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Latvia. Louth Contemporary Music Society also acknowledges the generous sponsorship from The Irish Times, Fáilte Ireland and RTÉ lyric fm. Tickets are now on sale from: www.centralticketbureau.com. Telephone Bookings ROI: 0818 205 205; UK 0870 850 2896, International :++ 353 1 4487777 The Central Ticket Bureau, Liberty Hall, 33 Eden Quay, Dublin 1 www.ticketmaster.ie and all Ticketmaster outlets Drogheda Arts Office 041 987 6165 LCMS 042 9353576 St. Patrick's Cathedral 042 9334648 An Táin Box Office 042 939 2919 Further information is available from www.louthcms.org Further information on the Latvian State Choir is available here: http://www.choirlatvija.lv/. Notes to editors Arvo Pärt Arvo Pärt was born in 1935 in Paide, Estonia. After studies with Heino Eller’s composition class in Tallinn, he worked from 1958 to 1967 as a sound engineer for Estonian Radio. In 1980 he emigrated with his family to Vienna and then, one year later, traveled on a DAAD scholarship to Berlin, where he has lived ever since. As one of the most radical representatives of the so-called ‘Soviet Avant- garde’, Pärt’s work passed through a profound evolutionary process. His first creative period began with neo-classical piano music. Then followed ten years in which he made his own individual use of the most important compositional techniques of the avant-garde: dodecaphony, composition with sound masses, aleatoricism, collage technique. Nekrolog (1960), the first piece of dodecaphonic music written in Estonia, and Perpetuum mobile (1963) gained the composer his first recognition by the West. In his collage works ‘avant- garde’ and ‘early’ music confront each other boldly and irreconcilably, a confrontation which attains its most extreme expression in his last collage piece Credo (1968). But by this time all the compositional devices Pärt had employed to date had lost all their former fascination and begun to seem pointless to him. The search for his own voice drove him into a withdrawal from creative work lasting nearly eight years, during which he engaged with the study of Gregorian Chant, the Notre Dame school and classical vocal polyphony. In 1976 music emerged from this silence – the little piano piece Für Alina. It is obvious that with this work Pärt had discovered his own path. The new compositional principle used here for the first time, which he called tintinnabuli (Latin for ‘little bells’), has defined his work right up to today. The ‘tintinnabuli principle’ does not strive towards a progressive increase in complexity, but rather towards an extreme reduction of sound materials and a limitation to the essential. George Pelecis The main characteristics of composer’s music are positive emotions, joy of music and music-playing, contemplation of the ideal or aspiration for it. The musical language is based on diatonic, consonance's and clear major - minor system. As a musicologist G. Pelecis is author of two theses about Johannes Ockeghem (XV c.) and Palestrina (XVI c.) as well as more than 30 articles about problems of form in the music of Middle Ages, Renaissance, baroque and a number of Latvian composers. Georgs Pelecis is born in Riga, 1947, graduated from Aram Khachaturjan’s composition class of the P. Tschaikovsky Conservatoire, Moscow (1970), post graduate research studentship, until 1977, doctor art. (1981), doctor habil. art. (1990). “A Study Of Palestrina Style” is marked by the International Palestrina Center in Rome (1993). G. Pelecis studied for a short period at Oxford (1995, Corpus Christi College) and Cambridge (1997, Gonville and Caius College) Universities. His music for Roald Dahl’s “Jack And The Beanstalk” had its world-premiere in the Royal Albert Hall (London). Since 1990 G. Pelecis is professor of the Latvian Academy of Music. He teaches theory and history of counterpoint and fugue. He was the first president of the Riga Centre of Early Music. As a composer G. Pelecis took part in different music festivals ("Alternativa"- Moscow; Lochenhaus - Austria) Deirdre McKay Deirdre McKay was born in Co. Down. She studied music at Queen's University, Belfast, continuing her studies with John Casken at the University of Manchester and later with Kevin Volans. In 2003 she completed a PhD in composition at Queen's University, Belfast, with Piers Hellawell. Appointed Composer in Association to the Northern Sinfonia’s affiliated Young Sinfonia in 2002, her work has received over ninety performances in the past five years in Ireland, the UK, Europe, South Africa and the US with commissions from RTÉ, Music Network, Sligo New Music Festival and the Dublin Youth Orchestra with performances by the Vertavo, Tippett and RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartets, Andrew Zolinsky, the Ulster Orchestra, the Crash Ensemble and Concorde. Her work has featured at the Park Lane Series at the South Bank, Orléans Concours International and the RTÉ Living Music Festival, and has been broadcast by the BBC and RTÉ Lyric FM. In 2005 her RTÉ Living Music Festival commission ‘Ice Etchings’ was selected for performance by the Firebird Ensemble at the IAMIC Congress in New York. In education, she has led projects with the Ulster Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Pushkin Prizes Trust and Opera Theatre Company. Recent commissions include a second collaboration with visual artist Jean Duncan for the Naughton Gallery, a Concorde Beckett Centenary commission, an ACNI commission for the RTÉ National Chamber Choir and an RTÉ commission for the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. The State Choir Latvija The State Choir Latvija was founded in 1942. The chorus gained its title of the state choir in 1947. Since 1997, the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the choir is Maris Sirmais. The repertoire encompasses large- scale compositions - oratorios, cantatas, masses, requiems, symphonies, concert performances of operas, a broad a cappella program and compositions for chorus and organ. This covers music from early Renaissance to the present day. The choir received the Latvian Grand Music Award three times (1998, 2000, 2002).In 2003 the choir received the Award of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Latvia.