Like
their landscapes the music of
Ireland and Scandinavia are spectacular; inspiring;
and very different to each other. Northern
Lights brings “Songs of the Fjord and Glen”,
an exploration of Irish and Scandinavian traditional
songs and dance music that connects a vast musical
landscape. This performance evokes everything
between the ice of the North sea and the warmth
of Irish summer pastures, in search of a deeper
understanding of the things that unite us all.
Northern
Lights is a
blending of Norse and Irish: sagas, stories, soundscapes,
cultural flavours and perspectives, through a meeting
of their music and songs. It is a project of Lorcán
Mac Mathúna (voice, whistle), Raphael De Cock
(voice, pipes, siberian harp, shrutti, hardanger
fiddle, jews harp), and Rémi Decker (pipes,
guitar, low whistle).
With
Northern Lights, De
Cock and Mac Mathúna, backed by the percussive
guitar of Decker, have found extraordinary similarities
in how themes that are common to all people (superstition,
exile, and lament of the dead, for instance) are
expressed in Ireland and Scandinavia. In fact these
expressions
of human nature are so fundamental that we recognise
them instantly regardless of language.
With
Northern Lights they have found resonant touchstones
in
the musical sounds of traditions separated
by language and distance, and have created a “mesmerising” dialogue
with them. They have managed to create a soundscape
which conveys the local and the universal at once. So
what! what's so special about Northern Lights?
Northern
Lights brings a new program in which Traditional Irish
music and Ireland’s
oldest singing style, sean nós, is put in contrast
to Scandinavian musical traditions and singing styles.
Inspired
by the reconstruction of a 1000 year old viking longboat
(the Havhingsten fra Glendalough, or the Sea
Stallion); which was originally built in dublin and scuttled
in Roskilde, Denmark, in the 10th Century; this group
explores possible influences and shared stories between
the traditional
cultures of both worlds. Worlds that were once linked
in an age of longships, raids, and trade.
Taking themes
that arise in both cultures’ song
traditions. it engages in an interlocking dialogue of
verse. Linguistically the songs are seperate but musically
there is a symbiotic connection.
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price: €15