MUSIC Making music with the green and red of Mayo

Making music with the green and red of Mayo


Áine Ryan

‘STILL Life in Green and Red’. The title is so evocative it could mean anything from a painting to a football team. It is in fact a musical composition inspired by the people of Mayo and about to be premiered at the atmospheric Ballintubber Abbey on Sunday, October 16, next. The performance will be by the ConTempo Quartet.
Under the Mayo County Council ‘Landmark’ public-art programme, composer-in-residence Ian Wilson has met numerous people to document how they are coping with the present protracted economic downturn. 
While devising his brief, which was to ‘create a large-scale piece of music that clearly reflects this notion and gives a snapshot of County Mayo just now’, he has focused particularly on how people have remained positive and proactive.
“To that end, songs have been produced from pupils’ poems, and recordings made of the children singing them. Another song was inspired by the way the children themselves first said the lines – identifying and emphasising the changes in pitch and rhythm that the children naturally use when speaking,” said Gaynor Seville, Mayo County Council’s Public Art Co-Ordinator.
Ultimately, all the music from the schools he has visited and all the interviews will go towards the creation of a soundtrack, which will be the basis of a 40-minute work for the ConTempo Quartet from Galway.
Formed in 1995 when students at the Music University in Bucharest, Romania, the internationally renowned ConTempo String Quartet has toured the world extensively and has been based in Galway since 2003.
The Landmark programme will be officially launched at Lough Lannagh, Castlebar, in the Spring of 2012.

The special performance of ‘Still Life in Green and Red’ at Ballintubber Abbey will be held this Sunday, October 16, at 8pm. Admission is free. To reserve a place, call 094 9047561 or email gseville@mayococo.ie or mayoarts@mayococo.ie. For more information, visit www.landmarkpublicart.com.