RESONATE 2023 artists announced

RESONATE 2023 artists announced
We are delighted to announce our RESONATE artists-in-residence for 2023.

We are delighted to announce the six musicians taking the helm for RESONATE 2023, Music Network’s artist residency programme in partnership with glór (Ennis), Ionad Cultúrtha (Baile Mhúirne), The National Opera House (Wexford), Triskel Arts Centre (Cork City), The Dock (Carrick-On-Shannon) 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 Centre, 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.

Now in its 3rd year, RESONATE provides support for 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 the creation of new work, in addition to a range of in-kind supports from both Music Network and each venue partner along with opportunities to showcase the work through live performances and digital updates.

Commenting on the announcement, Music Network’s CEO Sharon Rollston said: “We’re very pleased to be offering RESONATE together with our partners for a third consecutive year. It’s the most extensive of our musician residency programmes and offers lots of scope for musicians to develop imaginative new work, including cross-artform ideas where music is central. We are really looking forward to seeing what these exciting artists share with audiences when they perform live in their host venues later in the year. ‘’

Each artist will present a public performance of work developed during their residency at their host venue during the months of November and December. Full details of the performances will be announced later in the year.

An outline of the 2023 RESONATE residencies:
Ali Comerford RESONATE artist-in-residence at The National Opera House
RESONATE 2023 artists announced

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.

Ali is an Irish musician, born and raised in Kilkenny. She completed her Masters in Viola Performance at the Manhattan School of Music in New York after gaining a full scholarship to study with Patinka Kopec.

During her time there, she won the Fuchs Chamber Music Prize, and the Hindemith Viola Competition, and also played as principal violist under the baton of Leonard Slatkin.

After graduating in 2017, Ali performed as a freelance musician in New York and played as principal violist with The New York Chamber Music Players, The Handel Festival Orchestra and TENYC, with whom she premiered works at Carnegie Hall, all while holding a Fellowship at the International House NY. Ali then won a position with Lincoln Center Stage and spent time traveling the world as a chamber musician and soloist, most notably to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Alaska.

Ali also holds a Masters in Violin Performance from the Royal College of Music in London and a Bachelor of Music from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2021, Ali released her debut album He Knows to critical acclaim.

More about Ali Comerford

Niamh O’Brien RESONATE artist-in-residence at Ionad Cultúrtha
RESONATE 2023 artists announced

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.

Niamh is a harp player, composer, and singer from Co. Limerick. She has performed in Ireland, Europe, and America as a solo artist, and with traditional groups such as The Chieftains, AnTara and Alyth McCormack.

In 2023 her group, Hoodman Blind, will release their debut album on the Raelach Records label. Since 2017 she has been active in audio and radio, working as an editor and producer with the award-winning Grey Heron Media and The Irish in New York Oral History Project.

Her current compositional practice combines traditional, folk and electronic music, with radio and audio arts. In 2021 she was the winner of a Rising Award at the prestigious HearSay International Audio Arts Festival. She is currently studying for a PhD in Arts Practice at UL. Her research is funded by the Irish Research Council. 

More about Niamh O’Brien

Phil Robson RESONATE artist-in-residence at Regional Cultural Centre
RESONATE 2023 artists announced

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.

Phil is a UK born, multi-award-winning guitarist/composer, who was a seminal part of the London, then later NYC music scenes for many years and is now based in Northwest Co. Roscommon.

He’s led bands featuring jazz legends such as David Liebman, Mark Turner, Billy Hart, James Genus & many more as well as working as a band member with Barbra Streisand, Kenny Wheeler, Charles Earland, Donny McCaslin, Django Bates, The BBC Big Band and a diverse spectrum of internationally celebrated musicians.

In Europe he’s renowned as the co-leader of the cult UK band ‘Partisans’ with saxophonist Julian Siegel and for his work with partner and great singer/songwriter Christine Tobin. In New York he’s best known for his collaboration with the great saxophonist/composer Jed Levy.

He's also a recording artist with highly acclaimed albums who performs at major venues and festivals around the world.

More about Phil Robson.

Ultan O’Brien RESONATE artist-in-residence at The Dock
RESONATE 2023 artists announced

Ultan is a fiddle and viola player, composer and filmmaker hailing from County Clare based in Leitrim. His background is in traditional Irish music and improvised music. He travels and plays as a soloist, in duos with Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Nic Gareiss and Antonio Breschi, and as a member of Slow Moving Clouds, Skipper’s Alley, John Francis Flynn and Neil Ó Loclainn’s Cuar.

In 2020, Ultan and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin released an album, Solas an Lae, on the Scottish label Watercolour Music which was awarded Best Folk Album at the RTÉ Radio 1

Folk Awards 2021. In 2020 Ultan was named one of the Contemporary Music Centre’s Emerging Composers and has been commissioned to compose a number of works as a result; In 2022, Ultan was commissioned to create a film and score as part of Ulysses Journey 2022. The film was screened in IFI, Dublin; CCI, Paris; SARC, Belfast and Budapest,
Hungary, and at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2022.

More about Ultan O’Brien

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 the fields of folk and traditional music, Ultan and Martin also share an adventurous spirit when it comes to exploring musical boundaries. Their work will bring live acoustic instruments, electronic music, visuals and storytelling together to explore the peculiar history and evolution of scordatura. The term, which means alternate tuning on the fiddle, is a unique part of the fiddle playing tradition in Leitrim.

Zoé Basha RESONATE artist-in-residence at glór
RESONATE 2023 artists announced

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.

Zoé Basha is a Leitrim-based musician and composer. She draws from her background as a traditional singer influenced and inspired by the multiple places in which she has resided and the multiple cultures embedded in her sound today.

After growing up between the U.S. and France, then studying as a vocalist at Berklee College of Music in Boston where she focused primarily on blues and jazz, Zoé moved to Ireland and fell into traditional singing in Dublin. In a milieu blending political dissent, feminism, queer theory and traditional music, she made her home. Since then, she has been working on both music and carpentry between Ireland and France.

From 2019 to 2023, Zoé was a member of vocal trio Rufous Nightjar with collaborators Anna Mieke Bishop and Branwen Kavanagh. In May 2023, Zoé was commissioned to arrange and perform a piece in three-part harmony for traditional singing festival Féile Róise Rua on Arranmore. Awarded the Leitrim Individual Artists Bursary in 2022, Zoé began developing a new body of work blending airs and style of Irish traditional song, rhythm and harmonies of Occitan polyphonic singing which she intends to explore further during her RESONATE residency.

Vicky Langan RESONATE artist-in-residence at Triskel Arts Centre
RESONATE 2023 artists announced

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.

Vicky Langan is a Cork-based artist whose practice operates across several often-overlapping fields, chiefly sound, performance, and film.

With a focus on the sounds of the body and its functions, involving contact-miked skin, amplified breath and live electronic manipulation, Langan’s work sits between sound and performance art. Using simple raw materials such as domestic objects, hair and magnetic tape, she layers physical gestures and scraps of sound to create intensely personal imaginary landscapes where the material body and sensual inner worlds mesh. In opening herself emotionally, she creates warm yet discomforting rituals that at once embrace the viewer and remain resolutely private, exploring the limits of what can be shared between people and what must remain mysterious.

Her decade-long filmmaking partnership with filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain has resulted in sixteen moving image works to date, with screenings and retrospectives of their work having been shown throughout the world. She is a recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Artist Award for Music, as well as bursary awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork City Council and a Music Capital Scheme award. 

More about Vicky Langan

RESONATE is a Music Network artist residency programme in partnership with glór, Ionad Cultúrtha, The National Opera House, Triskel Arts Centre, The Dock and Regional Cultural Centre.