Protected: The Hunger – Album

Composer Donnacha Dennehy’s music is marked by a sonic and rhythmic intensity and a kind of volatile, dirty tonality that travels in and out of an overtone-based focus. His fascination with the way time and light stretch and contract through the seasons of the year in his native Ireland, and the psychological impact of such phenomena, has often influenced the structure of his music generally. The intersection between words and music, and the vocal sean-nós (old style) tradition has exerted a strong pull over him too since he was a child attending informal get-togethers at his grandmother’s house in Kerry. “There’s be long, all-night sessions in my grandmother’s house with singing and poetry, and people remembering 30-stanza poems,” Dennehy told NPR. 

Returning to Ireland after studies abroad, principally at the University of Illinois in the US, Dennehy founded Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s now-renowned new music group, in 1997. Alongside the singers Dawn Upshaw and larla Ó Lionáird, Crash Ensemble features on the 2011 Nonesuch release of Dennehy’s music, entitled Grá agus Bás. Other releases include a number of NMC Records in London, Bedroom Community in Reykjavik and Cantaloupe and New Amsterdam Records in New York. He joined the music faculty at Princeton University in 2014, and now lives in America. In recent years, Dennehy has completed two operas with Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist. Learn more at www.donnachadennehy.com.

English soprano Katherine Manley established her early operatic career in baroque music after studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow and the Benjamin Britten International Opera School at the Royal College of Music in London. In recent years she has become more heavily involved in contemporary opera, and has premiered works by Michel Van Der Aa, among others, as well as appearing in the role of the Wife in Donnacha Dennehy’s first opera with Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel.

In addition to her growing reputation in the contemporary operatic repertoire, Manley has played Creuse in David McVicar’s production of Charpentier’s Medée and The Return of Ulysses (the Young Vic) at the English National Opera and Messaggera/Proserpina in Orfeo with Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican Centre London. She made her US stage debut as Oriana in Handel’s Amadigi for Central City Opera in Colorado. Over the past seasons, Manley has been a popular guest artist at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, featuring in the leading roles of Eliza Doolittle in Robert Carson’s My Fair Lady and Maria in The Sound of Music. Proving equally at home in high profile musical theatre productions, she also sung Maria for Central City Opera and Julie in Carousel for Opera North at the Barbican Theatre. Learn more at www.katherinemanley.co.uk.

Born and raised in the Irish-speaking Cúil Aodha area in West Cork, Iarla Ó Lionáird started singing as a boy of 5, learning traditional songs passed down from his mother and aunt, who in turn had learnt them from their mother. Iarla is one of the founding members of The Gloaming, a group made up of some of the most prominent and experimentally inclined traditional Irish musicians. 

A twice Grammy-nominated artist, Ó Lionáird has worked with a stellar cast of composers internationally including Donnacha Dennehy, Dan Trueman, Nico Muhly, Gavin Bryars, and David Lang and he has performed and recorded with such luminaries as Peter Gabriel, Nick Cave, Robert Plant, and Sinead O’Connor. Ó Lionáird’s radio series “Vocal Chords” on the mysteries of the human voice, for Ireland’s National Classical Music Broadcaster, RTE Lyric FM, won both Gold and Silver Awards at the “New York Radio Festival” 2017. His voice has graced the silver screen also, with film credits extending from The Gangs of New York to Hotel Rwanda and most recently as featured singer in the film Brooklyn starring Saoirse Ronan. He is the vocalist with the critically acclaimed Irish/American band The Gloaming. Learn more at http://iarla.com/wp/. 

Alarm Will Sound is “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene” (The New York Times). A 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s music, they have established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic virtuosity.

With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. “Stylistically omnivorous and physically versatile” (The Log Journal), their repertoire ranges from European to American works, from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Since its inception, Alarm Will Sound has been associated with composers at the forefront of contemporary music. The group itself includes many composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work.

A recent collaboration with jazz trio Medeski, Martin and Wood was featured on the 2019 Winter Jazzfest. In 2013-14, Alarm Will Sound served as artists-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, premiering works by composers Tyondai Braxton and Kate Soper, choreographer John Heginbotham, and writer/director Nigel Maister. Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival which features eight world premieres by early-career composers.

Alarm Will Sound may be heard on fifteen recordings, including its most recent, Omnisphere with Medeski Martin and Wood, and the premiere of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite. Acoustica, their genre-bending, critically-acclaimed album, features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin. For more information, visit Alarm Will Sound’s website at www.alarmwillsound.com