Hi Everyone
It’s been a loooooong time since I sent out any kind of newsletter, or update on my activities... Very bad form I know, and of course completely against the grain of what you’re supposed to do these days. I’ve been very busy, but still, that’s no excuse.... mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. (As you can see, a Catholic upbringing can be hard to shake off!)
I promise to do better in the future, and as a start I’m sending you a link to some audio and video stuff you can download if you’re interested. These are all taken from various projects, some recent, some less so – but I hope you’ll find something to enjoy in there. There’s a PDF with the details of the players etc. Included with the link. You can download it here
The first 6 months of this year were very busy – I travelled a lot (London, Brazil, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, USA etc.), did a lot of teaching, some recording and some playing. In January I went to New York and apart from seeing a lot of great music, I picked up my beautiful new bass made for me by master Luthier Harvey Citron. I’m really excited by this instrument – though I’m still getting used to it. It’s very different to my other bass both physically and in how it sounds – though it retains that acoustic quality that I’m always looking for. You can see a Youtube clip of me playing it solo here And with the great Irish guitarist Tommy Halferty here
Plans for the Autumn include an Irish tour with the great Dave Liebman and the brilliant young Finnish drummer Jussi Lehtonen, teaching in Kobe and Nagoya in Japan in October, teaching at the Paris Conservatoire in November, as well as playing with my quartet Lingua Franca at the Jazzy Colors festival in Paris in November. Details of all of these can be found on the website under ‘Dates’
Another thing I’ll be doing while in Paris is rehearsing with a new band featuring three great French musicians – Stéphane Payen on alto, Christophe Lavergne on drums (we made a video of a previous concert – you can see it here) and the brilliant violinist Dominique Pifarely . I’m really looking forward to this, the music promises to be challenging, adventurous and fun – which is a very nice combination!
In the past year I’ve also recorded music with two great Danish musicians – the saxophonist Lars Moeller and the drummer Jonas Johansen . This music grew out of some work we did together on rhythm, and we dcided that it was so much fun to play together that we should try and develop the music further. This culminated on us recording in Copenhagen and we’re hoping to release the music in the not too distant future. Compositions are by all three of us and all, naturally enough, are heavily rhythmic with some unique grooves. Looking forward to developing this further.
Another thing that’s been keeping me busy is the writing of my new Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra – this will be performed with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin on January 17th and 20th 2012. I’ll write more about this in a later bulletin, but I’ve decided to keep a ‘composition video diary’ of the process of the composition of the piece – you can see the first one here – subsequent episodes are also on Youtube. The composition of the piece is now finished and I’m about to begin the laborious process of scoring it and editing the parts. Wish me luck!
Thanks for your interest, and please drop me a line if you feel like it – it’s always good to hear from you!
Ronan
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