Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher and sound artist from Belfast, working with experimental and improvised sound, and with live electronics, from a traditional Irish music background. Her recent work has combined traditional music with bronze sculpture, sound art and movement sensors. She has been commissioned by hcmf// and Red Note Ensemble to create a new piece, Notwithstanding, that will be premiered at hcmf// 2022. It is for solo harp, electronics and ensemble.
In Ann Cleare’s Dysmorphia II, the three instruments adopt warped versions of each other as if they are different sides of the same brain, looking at and interpreting the same world but unable to form a consensus on their vision of it. This is an obsessive, distorted world in which every compositional parameter is saturated in the idea of dysmorphia – timbral, harmonic, formal, rhythmic, and dynamic dysmorphia with each parameter frantically searching for the difference between reality and perception.
Nick Roth’s Flocking III, meanwhile, explores the mechanisms of an emergent system in which individual components can be perceived to express themselves as a group. Nature offers many spectacular examples of this type of behaviour, of which perhaps the most beautiful is the flocking of birds in flight.
Úna Monaghan Notwithstanding (World Premiere)*
Ann Cleare Dysmorphia II (World Premiere of trio edition)
Nick Roth Flocking III (UK Premiere)
Red Note Ensemble
Ruth Morley, flute / piccolo
Will White, clarinet / bass clarinet
Jackie Shave, violin
Tom Hankey, viola
Robert Irvine, cello
Iain Crawford, double bass
Tom Hunter, percussion
Úna Monaghan harp
Nick Roth soprano / tenor saxophones
Geoffrey Paterson conductor
*co-commissioned by hcmf// & Red Note Ensemble
