Music Network announces RESONATE residencies in six venues across Ireland

Today, Tuesday, July 11, Music Network has announced six musicians taking the helm for RESONATE 2023, Music Network's artist residency programme in partnership with The Dock (Carrick-On-Shannon), glór (Ennis), Ionad Cultúrtha (Baile Mhúirne), The National Opera House (Wexford), Triskel Arts Centre (Cork City) and Regional Cultural Centre (Letterkenny).  

This year's RESONATE artists-in-residence are Zoé Basha at glór, Niamh O'Brien at Ionad Cultúrtha, Ali Comerford at The National Opera House, Vicky Langan at Triskel Arts, Ultan O'Brien at The Dock and Phil Robson at Regional Cultural Centre.

The programme brings some of Ireland's most established professional musicians to six cultural spaces across Ireland between July and December.

In its 3rd year, RESONATE supports professional musicians with a strong track record in music performance to develop new work and/or collaborations.

Each residency provides a grant of €6,000 to enable the selected musicians to devote time to creating new work, in addition to a range of in-kind support from both Music Network and each venue partner, along with opportunities to showcase the work through live performances and digital updates. 

Music Network's CEO Sharon Rollston said at the announcement that the programme offers lots of scope for musicians to develop imaginative new work, including cross-artform ideas where music is central.

"We're very pleased to offer RESONATE with our partners for a third consecutive year. It's the most extensive of our musician residency programme, and we are really looking forward to seeing what these exciting artists will share with audiences when they perform live in their host venues later in the year", he added. 

An outline of the 2023 RESONATE residencies:

Violinist, violist, and songwriter Ali Comerford will take up residence at The National Opera House in Wexford to develop a new project titled Just This Once. During her residency, she will invite members of the public to submit stories about themselves or other people in their area. Inspired by the lives of the local community, Ali will share their stories through the medium of song in her live performance at the end of the residency.

At The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon, musician and composer Ultan O'Brien, who plays both fiddle and viola, will collaborate with accordion player and electronic music maker Martin Green. Both highly regarded musicians and composers in folk and traditional music, Ultan and Martin also share an adventurous spirit when exploring musical boundaries. Their work will bring live acoustic instruments, electronic music, visuals and storytelling together to explore scordatura's peculiar history and evolution. The term, which means alternate tuning on the fiddle, is a unique part of the fiddle-playing tradition in Leitrim.

In Baile Mhúirne, Niamh O'Brien will collaborate with fellow harper and songwriter Aisling Urwin and visual artist Colm O'Neill. Throughout the residency, Niamh and Aisling will work together to draw upon the rich repertoire of Irish harp music to create new, innovative arrangements of harp pieces and compose new work inspired by the landscapes of the Southwest of Ireland. They will celebrate the unique and wonderful sounds of two harps playing together and work with visual artist Colm O'Neill to bring inspirational, local landscapes into the live performance space at Ionad Cultúrtha.

Guitarist and composer Phil Robson will create a new work in collaboration with pianist Izumi Kimura and visual artist Jaki Irvine in Letterkenny. The trio will develop IRIS, a cross-art form collaboration inspired by ideas of deconstruction, fragmentation and their shared love of improvisation. The project will combine music and film, bringing together their individual disciplines in composition, guitar, piano and visual art to ultimately create a unique live music experience at Regional Cultural Centre.       

Zoé Basha, a musician and composer who draws on her background as a traditional singer, will collaborate with pianist, vocalist and composer Anna Mullarkey and fiddle player and vocalist Erin Hennessy at glór in Ennis. Together they will develop new compositions and arrangements during the residency. Alongside polyphonic arrangements of traditional songs, the compositions will blend airs of Irish traditional song, rhythm and harmonies of Occitan polyphonic singing, and the sway of Appalachian ballads with stylistic elements of jazz and blues. 

Vicky Langan is an uncompromising artist highly regarded for her raw performances, which combine sound art, noise, field recording and film. Over the course of her residency at Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, she will research, develop, shoot, score and compose new work for super8, tape and violin in collaboration with Cork filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain.  

Each artist will present a public performance of work developed during their residency at their host venue during November and December.

Full details of the performances will be announced later in the year.