REVIEWS

MICHAEL DERVANreviews Linda Buckley at the John Field Room and MICHAEL SEAVERreviews Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti at the Project theatre

Composers' Choice: Linda Buckley
John Field Room, Dublin

Salvatore Sciarrino - Trio No 1. Kaija Saariaho - Spins and Spells. Linda Buckley - jöklar. Volt. Donnacha Dennehy - Bulb. Linda Buckley - Q. Ligeti - Fanfares. Cordes à vide. Nancarrow - Toccata. Linda Buckley - galura.
The second of the three concerts in the National Concert Hall's Composers' Choice series focused on the music and musical choices of Linda Buckley. Buckley was born in 1979, studied music at UCC and TCD (where she now also lectures), and divides her time between Dublin and Berlin.

Her standard biography makes the point that "the diverse instrumentations of her work include Javanese gamelan, choir, multi-channel tape, prepared piano and orchestra". The Composers' Choice programme focused on works at the smaller end of the scale, both with and without electronics, two of them, Q and galura being heard for the first time.

Q, for voice and electronics, is based on a text by the 13th-century Persian poet, Rumi, in a translation by Coleman Barks. It's not so much a setting of the text as a treatment of it in a backward-looking, improvisatory, prog-rock way, with the microphone-hugging singer, Natasha Lohan, swaying and gyrating in the semi-darkness as she mulled over the words.

The premiere of galura, for piano trio and electronics, was performed by the Fidelio Trio, whose work has long impressed Buckley for its range, "from the subtle expressive nuances of their playing to a visceral, almost punk-like energy". The title is taken from a Javanese word for turbulence and emotion, and the music has an extempore feel to it, Buckley locking in to particular ideas or exploring particular zones like an improviser exhausting material before moving on, with the electronics providing a fractured, sometimes frail, commentary on the sounds of the live piano trio.

It was the choppy angularity of Volt (2006, for violin and piano) which sounded closest to a homage to Donnacha Dennehy, who made an early, indelible impression on Buckley through a Cork performance of his high-impact Junk Box Fraud.

It seemed to me that the most successful of the works Buckley offered was jöklar (2005, for piano), which takes its title from the Icelandic word for glacier. The piece moves successfully from slowly floating sounds into a world of giddy spikiness.

In her short spoken introduction, Buckley explained her choice of other music in terms of her interest in composers with "a unique individual voice". Her selected pieces by Salvatore Sciarrino (Piano Trio No 1), Kaija Saariaho (Spins and Spells for solo cello), Donnacha Dennehy (Bulb for piano trio), György Ligeti (two of the piano Études) and Conlon Nancarrow (the 1935 Toccata for violin and piano) certainly matched her description. The playing of the Fidelio Trio was always insightful.

MICHAEL DERVAN

Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti
Project, Dublin

As a prologue to their visual art exhibition, Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti presented an improvised performance of readings, slide presentations and movement in the pre-exhibition bareness of Project's gallery. Celebrating her 83th birthday and bundled up in a long coat and red scarf, Simone Forti captivated the small gathering with what she calls "animations." It's a body of work she has been developing for more than 20 years and a video version of her News Animations (first performed in 1987) will be seen for the first time as part of the exhibition. Like all great dancers there is a sense that every small part of her body is engaged in her performance and every cell knows its precise role in communicating with the audience. During these animations, her body moved to complete the end of spoken sentences without losing any of the meaning.

Visual and textual documentation of a changing America has brought Day and Forti together, and although often more wistful than angry, they quietly land their punches. Spoken images are lucid: the pure struggle of a picket line of strawberry workers; Forti's mother crying on a ship from Italy as the Statue of Liberty comes into view; or buying a loaf of bread with "hours" in New York State's culturally liberal city of Ithaca, where the Ithaca Hours currency substitutes time for money.

Day sung the first lines of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA ("Born down in a dead man's town,/ The first kick I took was when I hit the ground") as he clicked through slides of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington during renovation in 2004. The shots seemed furtive with dark blurry edges as if spied through a confined space, hinting at subversion in these post-Patriot Act times.

The war in Iraq was a sullen presence throughout the evening, although during the spoken and danced improvisation Forti led Day to more subtle metaphors and truths. Her journey from Florence to the US found resonance in Day's research into Blasket Islanders who ended up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and her tales, spiced with Day's wry observations, provided the richest material.

MICHAEL SEAVER