The driving force behind Louth Contemporary Music Society is Eamonn Quinn who is following where his vision leads him and focusing on composers
IF YOU have even the remotest interest in contemporary music, you’ve probably heard of the Louth Contemporary Music Society. If the organisation hasn’t registered with you, you might recognise some of the names the society has brought to concerts in Co Louth over the past five years – Joanna MacGregor, Terry Riley, Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Alexander Knaifel, Kronos Quartet, Valentin Silvestrov, the Hilliard Ensemble, Uri Caine, Sofia Gubaidulina, Talvin Singh, George Brooks, Lydia Kavina, Ivan Monighetti, the Sirin Choir.
English composer John Tavener would have been there too, if ill-health had not prevented him travelling for a three-day festival of his music. And if you’ve missed the concerts, you might have come across LCMS’s recordings, A Place Between, or Path, including repertoire from the concerts, but also broadening out from it. A third CD, Night Music: Voice in the Leaves, is currently in production, and another, which will include Siobhán Cleary’s Chaconne, is in the offing.
Louth is not exactly known as a hot-spot of new music, and the driving force behind the musical society is a softly spoken, 44-year-old VEC project manager with no musical training, Eamonn Quinn. He's a musical amateur, in the best sense, following where his vision leads him. It's a vision that's been focused in the first instance on composers. Quinn has successfully commissioned Riley, Pärt, Knaifel, Tavener and Silvestrov, as well as Georg Pelecis, Deirdre McKay, Rihard Dubra, and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, and works are in train from Rabih Abou Khalil and Betty Olivero. His latest venture, a programme at St Peter's Church, Drogheda, on Saturday, is titled Metamorphoses, and presents performances by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, in the context of works by Knaifel, Yanov-Yanovsky (an arrangement of Perotin) and Gubaidulina, and also features the cello ensemble Celli Monighetti. The poster for this concert was created by the award-winning Iranian designer, Reza Abedini. Here, Quinn tells The Irish Times about his relationship with music:
What led you to become a concert promoter?I wanted the same musical experiences that I had been able to have in Belfast and Dublin to be available in Louth.
What's the best thing about being a promoter?The opportunity to programme music and to give people unique experiences through doing so.
What's the worst thing about being a promoter?Finding the funds. It's really difficult. It's much harder in Louth, and much harder to market, than it would be in Dublin.
What's been your biggest surprise as a promoter?The audience response, the fact that the audience each time has been very complimentary about the programmes, which is great, because a lot of the music is unknown to them and very new to me as well. And it's really reassuring that they come back. Plus the sheer luck we've had in attracting composers.
What's your first musical memory?Music from my brother's Dansette [a 1960s record player]. I'm the youngest in a family of nine, and everybody had their own record collection. I just delved into all that stuff, seven-inch singles. The two or three pieces that I remember best were Terry Jacks's Seasons in the Sun,and Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, which for years I thought was a female singer. The other one is Cream's single, Badge. It was my brother Hugh's record.
Your most cherished musical memory?Two things. My wife Gemma played a traditional Irish tune from south Derry, called Slieve Gallion Braes. She played it on flute to myself and my father in the front room, and we both started crying. I knew Gemma was for me then. Listening to violinist Ioana Petcu-Colan and pianist Michael McHale playing Arvo Pärt's Fratresand other pieces, in rehearsal with Pärt and his wife Nora. That made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, and Pärt was overcome by it too.
If you had one musical wish for yourself, what would it be?To have a long-term presence here in Louth, with quality musical performances – things that are unique and innovative.
What's the most exciting performance, live or recorded you've heard during the last year?Our new recording of Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky's Night Music.It was written for Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble. It includes a recording Yanov- Yanovsky made of an old woman singing in the mountains in Uzbekistan. She didn't want him to record the ritual parts of her song, so he memorised them, and rewrote them for the solo cello in the piece. Ivan Monighetti, the cellist who recorded it for us, is a really big part of my musical life now.
What's the most exciting new piece you encountered over the past year? Night Music.
What have you listened to most recently on your iPod?Alexander Raskatov, a piece called Path, a viola concerto with Yuri Bashmet and the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev, and Gloria Coates's Symphony No 1, which I listen to all the time.
What's the most-played piece?It's an unreleased piece by Knaifel called Offertorioor The Holy Oblation,for 15 strings.
You mightn't know it but . .. I'm fascinated by chemists, the whole range of the things they have in their shops, not just the medicine, but from hair-dye, to bandages, and all that stuff you just don't need. And I like meditation, study of the breath, and things that still your mind.
If you weren't a project manager who also promotes contemporary music, what would you like to be doing?I'd like to be doing the music full time, and learning more about producing recordings, which is a black art that I find exhausting, stressful and exhilarating.
Louth Contemporary Music Society's Metamorphosesis at St Peter's Church, Drogheda, at 8pm on Saturday, booking at 01-8721122
