Braxton - Ghost Trance Music (Belfast, 2026)

Anthony Braxton - Ghost Trance Music

Sonorities Festival Belfast, 2026

Multiphonic Miniatures – Sarah Watts
Tesserae (a graphic score in G minor) – Ioana Petcu-Colan
Ghost Trance Music – Anthony Braxton

Queen's University, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast - 18th April 2026

"You Might Not Like It" is the disarming but refreshingly honest motto for Belfast's biennial Sonorities Festival of new and experimental music performances, panels and workshops, but for those of us 'in the know' or perhaps more accurately those of us who have some idea to expect the unexpected it's an opportunity to open your mind to the possibilities of what new and future music can be. You still might not always 'like' it but you will definitely hear music unlike anything you've heard before, often played on objects you've never thought of as musical instruments and, if open to the experience, you are likely to be impressed at the imaginative programming, the musicianship and the unique creativity of the works. I was only able to make it to one event this year, but all those elements were definitely on display in the programme of pieces for Ghost Trance Music.

The programme opened with a short solo piece by Sarah Watts, a familiar figure here as a member of the city's new music specialists the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble. The piece was advertised as 'Multiphonic Miniatures' but in a change of programme or perhaps as an alternative title Sarah Watts played her composition 'It's All I've Known', a piece written as a site specific work that was to be played on contrabass clarinet in the closed down disused cooling tower of the Nottinghamshire Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. Much more than being an experiment in acoustics, the piece is a response of a community to the closure of the station, a familiar landmark in the town, a place where many have worked for years, part of the whole fabric of the community.

Watts' resonant music evoked that deep connection between the place and the people, the sound engineer at the QUB Sonic Arts and Research Centre creating a surround-sound echoing reverb that somehow managed to replicate the sense of being in the building, while a projection of a series of photographs rising up the interior of the cooling tower were projected on a large screen behind the stage. The intent to place you within the music is ideally what every composer wants and this was as close to being there as possible, but the music itself was also just as effective in connecting to a place lost in time and memories, fitting in perfectly with the nature of programme's ghost trance music theme.

Ioana Petcu-Colan, first violinist and leader of the Ulster Orchestra and wonderful advocate for new music, found another new and original way to expand the scope of music and extend its outreach with a score that is unique in its compositional form with her composition 'Tesserae (a graphic score in G minor)'. I recall Brian Irvine (also on the stage later this afternoon) introducing the Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival audience to the wonders of the graphic score by getting members of the audience to scribble on a flip-chart and present it to his 12 piece orchestra to play. In 'Tesserae' Ioana Petcu-Colan took the graphic score to the level of multimedia artwork in five sections which she created and which was displayed just outside the hall. Incorporating pieces of broken cello strings and previously-played violin bow hair, the piece becomes the score, the blue representing G Minor, the rest open for three musicians from the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble - David McCann (cello), Aisling Agnew (flute), Sarah Watts (contrabass clarinet) - to interpret and play.

The idea of an artwork for a music score might sound a little random, experimental and abstract but musically, as played by the ensemble, it was expressive and accessible and came across beautifully as interpreted by the musicians. Normally working with a conventional score, although often with markings for extended techniques, this was a new kind of a challenge, requiring not improvisation exactly, but very much about interpreting and responding in the moment. I spoke to Ioana afterwards and she was delighted that the performed piece sounded almost exactly as she imagined, but the beauty of the score is that it is not fixed as conventional notes on a page and would be capable of sounding quite different with other musicians and instruments in another location entirely. As such there is no predetermined meaning that the score is meant to represent, it being rather an attempt to get across a musical idea on the part of the composer, incorporating objects that have actual musical and performance history, translating that through the installation and the musicians to speak to the listener. I found it wonderfully entrancing, which is presumably the intent of a programme based around Ghost Trance Music.

The challenges of musical interpretation take on another level of complexity entirely when presented with a graphic score by Anthony Braxton. Notionally a jazz composer and musician, Braxton's music is much more varied and defies any easy categorisation. Indeed, as Alexander Hawkins noted when he introduced the piece, Braxton never settles for doing the same style of music or work with a band of the same musicians for very long. His 'Ghost Trance Music' compositions, which comprise of around 150 pieces written between 1995 and 2006, must present a formidable challenge for any group of musicians to approach, combining traditional and graphic scores with space left within that for improvisation, interpretation and even inclusion of other pieces of his compositions.

That challenge is made just that little bit easier I imagine when you have eight musicians (and composers) of the highest level on the stage of the SARC, including several who have played regularly alongside Braxton. The Hard Rain SolistEnsemble with Ioana Petcu-Colan on violin were joined with Brian Irvine on electronics, Matthew Wright on turntable and live sampling, Alexander Hawkins on piano and Stephen Davis on drums. The 45-minute performance of 'Ghost Trance Music - Composition #245' is indeed intended to bring the listener into a trance-like state through its evolving and changing parts. It can sound chaotic when all eight musicians are playing together - or not so much chaotic as difficult to find a musical centre - but little modular sound groups of several musicians develop and expand on pulses and rhythms suggested by the graphic score and draw the listener in compellingly.

It's just as easy however to find yourself lost as get yourself lost in the composition, not always knowing where all the sounds were coming from in that "joyful commotion" as Sonorities prefer to describe the programming. Is that sound you're hearing electronics, turntable sampling, prepared piano, Alexander Hawkins's electronic box of tricks or that wind-up musical box that Aisling Agnew is holding to the microphone? to say nothing of the percussive sounds played on all the instruments - but the key is not to trying too hard to find a way in but instead let the music take you there. And essentially this is what this programme and the Sonorities Festival Belfast is all about, recommending that you to put aside preconceived ideas of what you think music should be and let the composer's music carve its own course via the musicians. You just need to open up and let it in.

Towards the end of the performance Alexander Hawkins scuttled across the stage with a sheet of music to give cues to Davis and Irvine to presumably include an unplanned concluding section. You expect experienced improvisational musicians like Hawkins, Davis, Wright and Irvine to be able to adapt to such a change but it was also taken up seemingly effortlessly by the experienced Hard Rain Ensemble musicians who, as practitioners of new and experimental contemporary music, never looked at all out of their comfort zone. It was around that point that I found that I was finally yielding to the ghost trance state just as the piece ended, or perhaps it's only when the music ends that you realise you've been there all along and probably even from the beginning of the whole programme.

External links: Sonorities Festival Belfast, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble - Ink Still Wet VIII (Belfast, 2024)

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble - Ink Still Wet VIII

Composers: Anselm McDonnell, Fionnuala Fagan-Thiébot, Simon Mawhinney, Omar Zatriqi, Peter O'Doherty, Sam Chambers, Ian Wilson

Conductor: Benjamin Haemhouts

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble: Aisling Agnew (flute), Sarah Watts (clarinet), David McCann (cello), Daniel Browell (piano) with guests Alex Petcu (percussion), Ciaran McCabe (violin), Ben Gannon (oboe), Lina Andonovska (flute)

Harty Room, Queen's University, Belfast - 1st February 2025

There may be some commonality in the musical backgrounds of the composers, many of them having studied at Queens University in Belfast or lectured there, but that's to be expected considering that the pieces in this programme of contemporary music are being presented - and in the case of four of the seven pieces actually commissioned - to form part of the eighth annual concert of new music performed by Northern Ireland's principal contemporary music ensemble, the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble. New music so fresh in fact that this particular annual programme goes under the title of Ink Still Wet. The backgrounds of the composers however are rather more varied than that suggests and that is reflected in the surprisingly wide variety of compositions presented in Ink Still Wet VIII.

Or perhaps not so surprising really. Aside from the permutations that you can make use of in a core ensemble of five or six musicians and a few additional guests, there are various creative and modern technologies that can be employed where appropriate in service of the demands of any given piece, and some unexpected ones too. As such, none of the pieces in the programme were remotely alike, which is a testament to the individuality and creativity of the composers and to the performers of the HRSE in adapting to those styles, but it's also a sign that new contemporary music is in a very good place at the moment - both locally and internationally - not relying on the style or technique of some of the modern titans of new music past, but seeking to find new and creative means of personal expression that speaks of the world today.

What impressed me most about all the selections is that none of the compositions presented here - well, maybe one or two of them a little - were purely 'conceptual' or technical exercises in virtuosity, but indeed many of them reflected in one form or another consideration of an newfound or revitalised appreciation for nature. The programme notes for Ink Still Wet VIII reveal that many of the pieces here found inspiration from sources in nature, and embraced the challenge of finding an artistic and creative way to express and share those impressions with an audience through music.

The first two pieces in the programme strove to do this by extending the range of traditional musical instruments by including electronic and sound effects from nature. A play on the word Ectosymbiont, that refers to a parasitic organism that attaches itself to another to form a symbiotic relationship Anselm McDonnell's 'Echosymbiont' saw the composer acting as the 'outside' force, processing some of the sounds of the live performance on computer and playing it back through an on-stage speaker as an echoing response. It was a little unsettling initially to hear pauses where Alex Petcu's percussion continued in soft fading delays of electronic reverberations, but aside from perhaps recognising that there is a symbiotic (but hopefully not parasitic) relationship between composer and performers, it also reminded me that music doesn't stop when the playing finishes. It resonates in the room and - hopefully - has made a deeper connection with the listener and perhaps stays with them even longer than that. This one certainly did. 

Fionnuala Fagan-Thiébot's 'Lisnabreeny Townland' was perhaps the piece where the connection with nature was most open and obvious without the aid of programme notes, the composer choosing to find her own form of symbiotic relationship in a solo flute composition by introducing field recordings alongside the playing of the flute. In four parts, inspired by walks to the ancient Lisnabreeny Rath in the Castlereagh Hills, the flute blended with and interacted with the sounds of birds, wind, water and leaves, even background sounds of traffic recorded on location. This was not just a pastoral piece however, but touched on mythology and fairy lore and our connection with an ancient world through nature. You could almost imagine this piece working in an outdoor setting, since it certainly achieved a sense of that even within the acoustics of the Harty Room at Queen's University. The piece resonated wonderfully with some deeply felt and sympathetic playing from Aisling Agnew. Again it emphasised how music is all around, how sounds inspire music and how music can strive not just imitate natural sounds but seek to embrace them and invite the listener to hear them in a fresh context while making something entirely new.

Simon Mawhinney perhaps stretched the definition of 'ink still wet' with his piece 'In Blue and Gold', taking a youthful student composition from 1998 and developing it into something new in 2024. If there is a connection to nature here it is at a remove, taking initial inspiration from another artistic work itself based on nature - a Middle Eastern painting 'Nocturne in Blue and Gold' by Walter Greaves, (which in itself were inspired by Whistler's paintings of the Thames in the same style) - which makes it an intriguing proposition when the composer is himself working at a remove and with maturity and experience in response to his younger nature and ideas. And it very much proves to be, the expansion of the instrumentation for a seven piece ensemble requiring the addition of guest oboist Ben Gannon with the HRSE delivering the wonderful richness and fullness of sound of the newly developed piece.

Belfast-born Omar Zatriqi's 'Diatribe' also proved to have a deep connection to exploring personal roots and influences, drawing from the composer's Albanian, Scottish and Croatian heritage. Although it incorporated folk influences from each of these worlds across each of its three sections and coda, there was no evident referencing of old style music in this thoroughly modern and contemporary piece composed for six piece ensemble. That in itself is a testament to acceptance of the gift of diversity and musically processing that mixed heritage into something new. If anything there was an sense of jazz fusion as much as folk in the bringing together of those influences to derive something of a distinct contemporary and personal voice. Different instruments would come into focus in each section, taking a lead and responding to each other, with the piano and marimba acting as a kind of connecting tissue. Each section seemed to build to a head only to be punctuated by crashes to release the build up of tension created by the overwhelming weight of bearing such rich and diverse ideas.

Perhaps it was just a lack of focus on my part after the interval, but Peter O'Doherty's 'Inflorescence' flew over my head and I was unable to find a way into it on a single hearing. It seeks to replicate in its structure the cluster patterns of flowers on a plant, the whole ecosystem of growth, flowering, decay and renewal. I love the idea of taking inspiration from structures in nature but it inevitably makes it a very complex piece with interweaving clusters, creating textures and resonances on adjoining sections and instrumentation. I would like to hear this again to see if I could get my head around it.

While understandably some of the commissioned works take advantage of the full resources of the musicians of the HRSE, there is also the freedom to choose to avail of just one of its soloists. Sam Chambers' 'His Feet are Light and Nimble' for solo violin certainly put guest violinist Ciaran McCabe through his paces, the piece feeling like it lay somewhere between a jig and demonic possession. It's not a long piece but such was the drive and delivery that you almost feared that McCabe was operating under a spell or a curse, and that if he stopped he would drop down dead in the spot. Fortunately that did not happen, but such are the fanciful ideas that come to mind while listening to the thrilling performance of this piece. Perhaps not so fanciful really since the piece is indeed inspired by just such a satanically possessed performance by a character in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian.

While trying to navigate my way through a new piece of music heard for the first time, I often look for focus on an instrument that leads the way through it. There was no such difficulty with Sam Chambers' piece and definitely no mistaking that the focus of attention in Ian Wilson's 'When I Became the Sun' was on the rivetting performance of guest flautist Lina Andonovska, for whom the piece was written. Again the concept determined to a certain degree the choice of instrument - another ambitious engagement with nature on a grand scale, perhaps the most important one of all - but there was no failing to recognise the dominance of the role of the flute in the piece or the virtuosity of the performance. Becoming the sun, Andonovska's playing was a stellar force of nature, and if the rest of the ensemble at times felt like they were merely responsive to its force and whims, they were nonetheless vital components in the piece and in the overall fabric of the concept.

Suitably rich in its instrumentation, the piece therefore had a coherence but also an unpredictability in how a response to those emanations could take many forms. Sometimes it manifested as playful ripples of percussion and piano keys, sometimes inviting a concerted rhythmic pulsation from the ensemble, slipping into a melodic bliss or a chaotic breakdown, in the process of course inviting an individual response within the listener. One other quite original element that introduced a hard to define character to the composition was the threading of motifs and indeed riffs, from heavy rock band System of a Down's 'Toxicity' throughout the composition. The title of the composition indeed comes from the last line of the song 'When I became the sun I shone life into the man's hearts'. It served perhaps as the human counterpart to the flute's sun and the ensemble's Earth responsiveness, but certainly brought additional dynamism to the conceptual and musical flavour of the piece.

External links: Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble