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 maybe even since the beginning of the whole programme.

External links: Sonorities Festival Belfast, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

Wilson - Lost Voices (Farpoint CD, 2026)

Ian Wilson - Lost Voices

Voces amissae ('Lost Voices')
for voice, cello, three violas and two percussionists
Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo-soprano
Ensemble Musikfabrik
Ian Wilson, conductor

Farpoint Recordings CD, 2026

Ian Wilson's Voces amissae ('Lost Voices', 2023) approaches a vast subject with minimal musical and lyrical means. A 50-minute work for mezzo-soprano, cello, three violas and two percussionists, it looks at the subject of how voices can be silenced - whether through political or domestic oppression, though a medical condition or simply in how the growing use of technology and mobile phones distances us from being able to communicate and fully express ourselves. More than just telling us about this, the work invites the listener to feel this experience for themselves - to a necessarily lesser degree - as a way of reflect on just how important an issue it is for us all.

Personal experience lies behind the inspiration for this subject and the approach that was undertaken to present it. The Irish composer Ian Wilson was working on a project to be sung by the Dutch soprano Nora Fischer, only to discover that Fischer was at that time suffering from vocal difficulties. Rather than abandon the project, the composer and singer chose to explore the challenges this loss of voice presented and widened the subject to consider other 'lost voices' that had been silenced, the personal impact of this, and how one might overcome the problem. Using excerpts from a number of interviews undertaken by Fischer and Wilson within a framework of extracts from "Under the glass of the volcano" by the Serbian poet Draginja Adamović, Lost Voices is performed here by the Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by the composer and recorded live at Ensemble Musikfabrik Studio in Köln in 2024

The subject dictating form to an extent, the work approaches several fundamental aspects of music that most perhaps take for granted. One is the question of what exactly music is, how it is formed from sounds and noises, how it breaks silence and how the instruments interact with each other to create a voice for expression of ideas and emotions. The other is the impression that music makes on us, how we are drawn to those sounds and how we process them. Perhaps above all there is a consideration of how important sound, music and the voice is as a necessary means of communication. The challenge of course is how to present those themes and ideas in a way that allows you to appreciate the sounds, their importance and meaning.

In that respect, the use of minimal instrumentation here is complementary to Wilson's Orpheus Down (2021), which has no words, the music itself taking on the role of another 'lost voice' struggling to deal with death and bereavement, undertaking a journey so important that it necessitates overcoming the darkness of the Underworld to find what has been lost and bring it back. The musical and vocal elements of Lost Voices take us on a similar journey, the music often evolving out of silence, starting out as noises, clicks and humming drones, taking form and shape and finding a path through the struggle into a form of rhythm and melody. Evidently it's the voices that take precedence here in the consideration of what it means if we lose that voice or it is taken away from us, how to find that voice again and how necessary it is as something that helps us understand and express "what it is to be alive and feel a sense of joy".

The often unconventional instrumentation seeks to find the most effective way to express and share the physical and emotional complexity of a variety of human experiences surrounding this; painful experiences that can't simply be put into words, but each demonstrating resilience and a willingness to find a way through them. It's as close to sharing and feeling those experiences that you would want to come. The strings - only cello and violas, instruments with a range closest to the human voice - fight against percussive sounds that for brief periods and short interludes rumble, rustle and drone, with flickers of voices and singing on distant radio programmes cutting through. Silence and space are also used to allow the pieces to breathe, to let silence exert its own power.

In such an environment every note and sound has purpose; nothing is superfluous. The music and words can speak of violence one minute - harsh rustling sounds lying behind the words of the the woman forced into an arranged marriage and forbidden to sing with threats of beatings - and silence the next, silence as another form of choice of expression; "My silence is marvellously untouchable to you", she observes. In the journey from 'Interlude 5' to 'Six months in hospital' we hear the singer who has lost her voice to an operation gasping for breath and words amidst scratching sounds that evolve into ringing bell (bells and vibraphones seem to embody optimism), the rising strings holding firmness of purpose, building strength and resilience before the reality of the present loosens the grip, spiralling and descending back into a deadening beat.

Evidently, the piece is not seeking to seduce you with sweet sounds that are pleasing to the ear, but Lost Voices nonetheless has an operatic quality in terms of its dramatic and musical phrasing, taking the listener on a journey through its development of a theme. Its unconventional presentation however draws attention to the importance of how music allows us to be a part of the progression of the subject; something that we aren't often aware of or just take for granted. Here it feels like we are given a unique and intimate behind-the-scenes look at the creation and evolution of a musical piece. Which is not to say that the piece is unfinished or unpolished, but rather that the form replicates the subject, leaving room for the listener to find their own space within it and bring that essential additional element of personal investment.

The actual recordings of the interviews gathered for the project could perhaps have been blended in to make this more of a multimedia piece, and those voices might have been interesting to hear, but the process of turning them into song is perhaps more vital to the aim of the project, reflecting the process of transforming sounds and noises into music, words into sentences and into singing. In any case, the different voices and what they convey each have a distinct character in subject and in how Ian Wilson composes music for them. As far as the composer is concerned, the musical voice is also respected here. There is nothing showy, nothing clever, the voice, the speaking, the singing used sparingly to relate only what is necessary, while each note of the music combines to give deeper expression that says something meaningful.

Considering the rapidly changing world we are living in, it is not difficult to place your own lost voice within this without it necessarily having been shut down; it can be all too easy for important voices to become drowned out in the bombardment of shouty social media and misinformation. And with AI progressing, the human voice and the human skills involved in conceptualising ideas and giving them meaningful expression are also in danger of becoming lost. One other thing you begin to appreciate when you listen to the stories and the arrangements here is the importance of the voice; the gift of having a voice can be taken for granted, whether that as a physical voice, as singing voice or as a tool for communication. Lost - or taken away - there is a realisation here of how precious a gift it is, one not to be taken lightly. 

It might sound like Lost Voices is an intense and challenging experience that demands a lot from the listener, but essentially it just asks you to listen, and the intricate sound design of the recording of the music here actually does a lot of the work for you, drawing your attention to the meaning and significance of what the words are telling you. That offers an immensely more rewarding experience that involves bringing the listener on a journey, guiding us through an immersive and enveloping experience that confronts ideas that we may not have considered before and takes us out the other side; or at least shows us that there are other ways out. If we can't raise our voices above the noise, we can at least use that gift more wisely.

Voces amissae ('Lost Voices') 50' 00”

Music composed by Ian Wilson
Texts: four poems by Draginja Adamović (Serbia, 1925-2000) and transcriptions of excerpts from a number of interviews undertaken by Nora Fischer and Ian Wilson
Performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by the composer

Recorded live at Ensemble Musikfabrik Studio, im Mediapark, Köln, 16th December 2024
Recorded, edited and mixed by David Stalling
Noise reduction by Lazar Arsović
Created with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland

First edition of 300 published by Farpoint Recordings, 2026
Produced by Ian Wilson and David Stalling
Mastered by David Stalling at Stille & Klang, Co. Westmeath, Ireland

Photography and design by Doreen Kennedy

CD Project co-ordinated by David Stalling and Anthony Kelly.

External links: Lost Voices

McDonnell - Kraina: Songs of the Polish Diaspora

Anselm McDonnell - Kraina: Songs of the Polish Diaspora

Frédéric Chopin - Polish Songs

Jonathan Nangle - Snáth

Anselm McDonnell - Kraina

Karol Szymanowski - Songs of a fairytale princess

Rebecca Murphy, Cathal Masterson

Harty Room, Queen's University Belfast - 27th March 2026

The experience of the immigrant and the asylum seeker is one that we are all acutely aware of in the present day and the question of how to deal with further global upheavals caused by war, climate change, growing economic inequalities, rampant capitalism and depletion of the earth's resources is becoming more pressing every day. Everyone thinks they understand the implications and the challenges it presents, but for those who have to experience displacement on a personal and individual level, it can be harder to explain how much of an impact this has on their lives. Anselm McDonnell's song cycle Kraina - inspired by an idea by soprano Rebecca Murphy to consider the circumstances of the large Polish immigrant population in Northern Ireland - considers it in terms of a wider question of identity: how it ties to a notion of home and the impact that the loss of such a fundamental need can have in a broader, more universal context.

Presented as part of the Imagine! Festival of Ideas & Politics in Belfast, the programme built around Kraina extends that idea by bringing in other similar songs that deal with the same subject and further enrich it, showing that the idea of home, land, borders, emigration and displacement really is an experience that has been shared not only by many Polish immigrants - it is no recent EU "freedom of movement" issue - but it has also been an experience for the diaspora of many Irish people over a period of many decades and centuries. The programme therefore draws on songs by Chopin and takes us through to Szymanowski, with some new Irish language songs by Jonathan Nangle and the shared Polish-Northern Ireland experience of Anselm McDonnell's Kraina at the heart of the programme. 

Language is key to expressing the diverse issues and sentiments experienced, so the idea of it being presented in song as well as music is fundamental, as well as itself presenting something of a hinterland or border where the words and music come together. Appropriately, the selection of songs in the programme are sung in Polish, Irish and English, but music itself is an abstract form of language that uses unconventional methods of communication to put its message across, which can make it challenging to put ideas and purposes across for those unfamiliar with the language, so to speak. As well as a diversity of spoken languages, superbly enunciated and enacted by Rebecca Murphy with Cathal Masterson accompanying on the piano, the performers also had just as wide a musical language to get across.

Although not a stated aim of the programming, the side-by-side selections of Chopin, Nangel, McDonnell and Szymanowski instigated a cumulative process that not only developed the theme over the years and across musical borders, but was testament to the richness of the idea of diversity, giving the audience some unfamiliar spoken and musical languages to grapple with and consider. Alongside the beauty of the songs in their own right - despite the challenges of the spoken and musical languages (we at least had printed translations of the words) - the performance of the Rebecca Murphy with Cathal Masterson was utterly beguiling, truly inviting you to engage in the experience, bringing a genuine operatic quality to the evening in terms of breadth of the subject, personal interpretation and overall impact.

Three of Chopin's 'Polish Songs' set the scene, Smutna rzeka (Sad River), Precz z moich oczu (Out of my Sight) and Wojak (The Warrior), surely the most welcoming of introductions to the theme, each enchanting in their own way, even if the very opening words of Smutna rzeka hint at troubles ahead. ('O river from the country of strangers/Why is your course so cloudy?'). Jonathan Nangle's three songs Snáth followed and brought about a subtle change in the mood. Like Anselm McDonnell, Jonathan Nangle is a contemporary Irish composer perhaps better known for more modern electro-acoustic and video multimedia work, but the three songs composed for Snáth (Yarn) were composed in the classic lieder style part of an initiative to set Irish language texts/poems to music. They very much head into darker places - literally in the opening lines of An Croí (The Heart) which translate as "everblack blackest black then down", Snáth evoking Ariadne with a ball of yarn to "guide you through the labyrinth, tunnels of all your dark places", Chugat (Towards You) warning "don't wait for me too long". They are all beautiful concentrated little pieces where the intensity of the sentiments was vividly expressed in the precise piano accompaniment of Cathal Masterson and impressive range of Rebecca Murphy's sweet lyrical soprano.

Anselm McDonnell's Kraina song cycle consists of four pieces, which are indeed - as Rebecca Murphy described in her introduction - each like a mini-opera in their own right. They were certainly delivered that way with a beautiful expressivity where the soprano absorbed the sentiments evoked in the magical hinterland between the words and the music and 'translated' them to the audience in a performance that scarcely needed a glance at the translations to understand what was being said. That was not necessary of course for Kraina II - The House on the Interface from 'Belfast. 99 ścian pokoju' by Aleksandra Łojek as the lyrics for this song were translated for the piece by the author herself. The song directly confronts the reality of moving into a troubled area of Belfast divided by a 'peace wall', but in a way, Łojek's experience (I think she said that in the post-performance discussion that she has moved home 37 times!) reflects the dilemma expressed in the beautiful Kraina I - Jeżeli porcelana ("didn’t anyone tell you that you’ll never in the world feel at home here?"), McDonnell's treated piano arrangement providing a jagged evocation of the poem's imagery of shattered porcelain ground under the tracks of a tank. 

There is room for a little optimism in Kraina III - Kraina, but the prospect of new pleasures to be found in a new place are tempered by feelings of nostalgia for the deeper roots of the homeland ("Why does my heart forever still bewail/Far-distant lands, more distant days of old?"). It's telling that the text of this piece from 'Pielgrzym' by Adam Mickiewicz was written in 1826, showing that the experiences of the Polish diaspora stretch back centuries and face many of the same challenges today. Not least questions of language and communication as the setting of Peter Skrzynecki 1978 text for Kraina IV - The Polish Immigrant where "tooth-grinding consonants that must be phonetically rehearsed". Rounding out the programme, the choice of three of Szymanowski's 'Songs of a fairytale princess' was just perfect, from the perspective of choosing a significant 20th century Polish composer to contrast with the opening Chopin pieces, for the remarkable variety that it brought to the programme, but also for how it seemed to long for that magical place of escape to an ideal world.

External links: Imagine! Belfast

Mitchell - Group! (Belfast, 2026)

Conor Mitchell - Group!

The Belfast Ensemble, 2026

Bob Broad, Conor Mitchell, The Belfast Ensemble, Rosie Barry, Matthew Cavan, Adam Dougal, Darren Franklin, Colette Lennon, Carol Moore, Brigid Shine

The Lyric Theatre - 25th March 2026

*Contains outrageous material*, the promotional information on the website for the Lyric Theatre production of Conor Mitchell's latest work warns us, along with what looks like the complete catalogue of "trigger warnings". Well it wouldn't be a proper Conor Mitchell Belfast Ensemble work if it didn't. Group! is the composer's latest musical and if it causes any offence, it does so with good intentions. Primarily with the intention to delight and entertain, but as with previous works in a variety of musical and theatrical forms, not least Abomination: A DUP Opera and The Headless Soldier, also with the intention of getting the audience out of their comfort zone and confronting subjects most other people steer clear away from.

Good intentions and helping people to confront and deal with difficult times they are going through is part of the agenda of Mitchell's work and here he confronts it head-on. And what better way to air those dark secrets than in a group therapy session, getting a bunch of fucked-up people together in a room and putting it all out there. Sorry for the offensive language - I'm sure Emmet, the 'facilitator' of the group would not approve (and he has 'issues' of his own) - but, like Chris in the group, wearing an ankle tag for stalking who feels his masculinity threatened by the failure of 'Gloria' to acknowledge him and the other women in the group getting preferential treatment - there is no time for any of this 'woke' nonsense, you just have to say things as they are.

Everyone's input is valued and what's said in the room stays in the room after all, but despite a number of sessions in the local community hall there haven't been any real breakthroughs. The group worry nonetheless that whatever dynamic exists between them is going to be upset when a new member is invited to join the 'circle of trust'. Amy would seem to have a rewarding job and a loving partner, but gradually the cracks in her story begin to show and identification with her problems stirs up feelings with the other members of the group. Painful feelings and anger, but surely it will help air those frustrations and open up a path to healing? There are a lot of issues that need venting and Emmet isn't sure the methods employed are strictly orthodox. Well indeed, and as a musical there's nothing orthodox about how Conor Mitchell chooses to express the issues that Belfast people - or just generally people in the modern world still clinging to the past - need to put behind them.

Group! sets the situation for a fun riotous drama, but does it gain anything from being a musical? Well, the nature of the story and how it unfolds provides a clue. It's all about communication (or maybe that should be sowing chaos), and while it could be a play in its own right, Conor Mitchell is a composer and music is his primary method of communication. The first half of the work might not have brought out any immediately catchy numbers as it accompanies the setting of the scene, but Mitchell can't resist the opportunity to throw in the odd swinging leg kicking routine to delight the audience (more like Fly Me to the Moonies here), but as Frank, Jean, Barbara, Chris, and Jackie each find a way to open up and confront their problems, there can be tremendous sensitivity and lyricism in the sentiments, in the phrasing, in the delicate playing and mood, the piano of musical director Bob Broad always catching those most affecting moments just before it hits you with a punchy revelation.

The musical element is clearly an integral to the communication of the story, pulling it all together and providing another level of engagement and entertainment, but Mitchell - co-writing with Matthew Hurt - is no slouch either when it comes to expressing his ideas with words. And directing too, since the characterisation and progression of the drama here are exemplary and the all-round singing/acting performances from Rosie Barry, Matthew Cavan, Adam Dougal, Darren Franklin, Colette Lennon, Carol Moore and Brigid Shine ensure that the viewer is totally engaged throughout. There's no Propaganda-like elaborate stage set for this one, but the above named cast, a stack of orange plastic chairs arranged in a semi-circle and a few scattered self-help leaflets are as much as one needs for the purpose of Group!. Having said that, even those elements are pushed to extremes and the lighting and the brilliant choreography routines directed by Paula O'Reilly - all provide the necessary theatrical magic.

And it's magic that works wonders. On its own you might see Group! as a piece of fun light music-theatre entertainment, but it manages nonetheless to confront some challenging aspects of the world we live in today. The reason you can say this with any authority is just by casting your eye over the body of work of Mitchell and the Belfast Ensemble, and see how it manages to be quietly subversive under the guise of popular entertainment. It's an eclectic body of work, the musical (like the earlier Propaganda) proving to be just as a valid and expressive a medium as the composer's work in opera, mass and symphony to communicate subjects that few will express openly. It's his form of group therapy and we are all part of the group; an extended 'Belfast Ensemble' if you like. If that’s not inviting chaos through communication, I don't know what is.

Clearly, part of the lesson in this mass group therapy session is that we should embrace our failings and see them as opportunities for growth, but Mitchell doesn't appear to have any worries on that score. Group! is a resounding success for the Belfast Ensemble, filled with the composer/writer's trademark humour, insight and his unapologetic urge to cause outrage and offence in following the course of his unique artistic expression. It's all in the cause of entertaining and finding a way reconcile all those diverse facets of dealing with our own personal issues in the midst of an increasingly insane world. That’s too much for one work alone, but as part of a diverse body of work, Group! is another wonderful addition to the catalogue. You'd need your head seen if you miss this.

External links: The Belfast Ensemble, Lyric Theatre

Dvořák - Rusalka (Dublin, 2026)

Antonín Dvořák - Rusalka

Irish National Opera, 2026

Fergus Sheil, Netia Jones, Jennifer Davis, Ryan Capozzo, Ante Jerkunica, Michelle DeYoung, Giselle Allen, Rachel Croash, Sarah Richmond, Alexandra Urquiola, Benjamin Russell, Andrew Masterson, 

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin - 22nd March 2026

I guess it's probably expected that commentators on opera should have something to say about Timothée Chalamet's views on the value and relevance of opera and ballet today, but I don't think anyone who has actually been to see an opera needs to be convinced that it is far from a dead art form, and probably in far better shape than the movie industry at the moment, certainly in terms of artistic standards and growing audiences. Every new production of an opera - even one that is centuries old - brings out something new, touches on modern day concerns, adds to our understanding of what it means to be human, have feelings and relate to the world around us. And when you have a creative team like Fergus Sheil and Netia Jones working on a production like the Irish National Opera's Rusalka... well, the mind truly is expanded.

All fairy-tales tend to have a moral or present a cautionary tale that touches on deep universal themes and Rusalka's are not difficult to identify, although it's a story that has taken on many different forms over the years in various European guises such as Undine, Melusine, Oceane and The Little Mermaid. Not only does each version or adaptation have its own take on the subject, the universality of the theme is one that each person can relate to from their own experience. As an opera Dvořák's Rusalka is perhaps richer than most, the musical score inviting many ways to interpret its meaning and draw out new ideas. Not all of them need to be as ambitiously transgressive as Martin Kušej's 2010 Bavarian State Opera production or Stefan Herheim's at La Monnaie in 2012, but this particular opera seems to invite imaginative and engaging responses in its productions.

We certainly get that in the extraordinary visual feast created by Netia Jones for the Irish National Opera's 2026 production. Jones might not have any unusual or original take on the subject - opinions will differ on that obviously depending on what expectations you bring with you to the theatre - but instead finds another way to approach and draw out the themes, seeking to make them less magically 'fairy-tale' and more rooted in reality. Being rooted in reality doesn't mean that it has to adhere to naturalistic imagery or a straightforward narrative line either, but rather she presents it in abstract terms that connect with the work's underlying sentiments. The INO production is definitely very much in the abstract and yet it does invite engagement, although there were certainly those around me in the audience who seemed to be less willing to engage with those ideas.

Despite the extravagant sets, creative lighting and stunning projection effects that I've seen Jones produce before (Philip Glass's Orphée and Brian Irvine's Least Like the Other), the INO production bases the story in simple but more familiar recognisable locations that reflect the underlying purpose of the work, if not exactly in any naturalistic fashion. Rusalka is less about being a mermaid who wants to become human than in essence being a coming-of-age story. The first scene in Act I then envisions the water nymphs as children in school uniforms, the watery element suggested by a stage-spanning network of pipes that they wrap themselves around like in a playground, monitored by the plumber/janitor Vodník. He's not so much a sinister water goblin than a man who speaks with the wisdom of age and the experience of disappointment, warning the girls not to dream of growing up too soon.

Rusalka of course refuses to listen and Jones chooses to depict her transformation through the witch Ježibaba as a surgeon employing plastic surgery so that Rusalka can fit into the glamour of the 'grown up' world that she is enchanted by (Vodník taking every opportunity to tell us and Rusalka that we should have listened to his warning). In one of the many extravagant scenes in the production (just to mention in passing the remarkable visuals of the moon in eclipse for the 'Song to the Moon' in Act I, the 3D-like projections for the scene in the forest and the impressive kitchen - all of them suitably scaled-up for the beauty and glamour of the world seen through the eyes of Rusalka), the dances that take place on a chess board reflect the young woman's inability to comprehend the sophisticated social interactions and moves that the Prince, the Foreign Princess and the other guests are able to navigate and control more easily. It's made perfectly clear that Rusalka is not ready for and does not belong to this world.

Aside from presenting jaw-dropping visuals - Netia Jones acting as director, set & costume designer and even the creation of the superb video projections - the production succeeds in establishing the right mood for each scene, allowing the drama and characters to play out within that without introducing any extraneous elements or eccentric touches. It places you within a magical world - it places you in Dvořák's magical musical world - enthralled, not feeling the need to seek to interpret what the director is trying to tell you. If you are familiar with the tale and wish to do so, you can carry over thoughts, impressions and ideas from other productions, each revealing a new facet, or you can relate it to your own impressions and experience. There is certainly the possibility of seeing the opera not only reflecting Rusalka's loss of innocence, but also the rapidly changing modern world itself being a great deal more complicated for a young person to navigate.

Essentially that's at the heart of what the work is about, or at least one main theme, and that's what came across here. It's perhaps most pointedly made in the 'plastic surgery' scene, showing Rusalka rejecting the purity of her nature and the purity of nature, for an artificial and superficial glamour world that doesn't make any sense or offer any true value. It's even reflected in the character of the Prince, who is too often presented in a superficial way, the lure by which Rusalka is drawn away from her true self and finds the truth of human nature in deceit and betrayal. In this production - perhaps something to do with the singing of Ryan Capozzo, perhaps the nostalgic tug of the score under Fergus Sheil - the prince has a more human role to play; a counterpart to Rusalka's desire to leave behind her childhood, his desire for Rusalka is an attraction to and longing for the beauty of pure innocence, but a stark warning that once lost it is impossible to regain.

The singing performances are of course key to keeping you engaged with what each of the characters are living through, and with Jennifer Davis you are with Rusalka unwaveringly all the way. The opera was sung impressively in the original Czech which is very much a part of the character and tone of the work (Davis becoming something of an Irish Dvořák specialist having sung in Armida in Wexford in 2022), but the direction plays an equally important part in the human expression of the characters. Both aspects were managed brilliantly not just by Davis but, as indicated above, allowing Ryan Capozzo to let you see another side to the Prince. Giselle Allen even lets you sympathise to an extent with the Foreign Princess - again too often merely a cipher - or at least understand where she is coming from. Sure, she has a mercenary side - a necessary survival quality in this grown-up world, but she shows some self-respect in having little time for the Prince and his equivocations - get with the programme or go to hell, she literally tells him. Likewise, the excellent Ante Jerkunica overcame the rather repetitive admonitions of Vodník to add meaning and poignancy to each utterance as the inevitability of the tragedy unfolded.

Just as vital to keeping you engaged rather than puzzled is the musical interpretation under Fergus Sheil. Rusalka has the potential to be a little bombastic if its romantic sweeps are not handled with delicacy. No mean feat reining in an orchestra of this scale, but Sheil is right at home here with his ability to marshal the vast orchestral forces for this work and gets all the moods, pace and dynamic right for this production. It's gushily romantic in places, robustly Wagnerian in others, sensitive and moody where it needs to be, hitting those punchy crescendos in the right places, working with the delivery of the singers and the visuals to achieve maximum impact. When you have such beautiful music to 'illustrate' those deep emotions, feelings and experiences, it's impossible not to be swept along. I'm sure even Timothée would have been impressed.

External links: Irish National Opera

Bennett - The Wilderness Voices (Belfast, 2026)

Ed Bennett - The Wilderness Voices

Sonic Lab, Sonic Arts Research Centre, 12th March 2026

Ed Bennett is a composer who some might associate more with loud and often dissonant contemporary music, mainly with his large scale orchestral works and in genre defying experiments with his Decibel Ensemble, but those are just one side of his efforts to express the themes and ideas that he has for his music, and there is another side to his work that can be just as effective, adventurous and experimental in an altogether quieter more meditative minimalist register. Reflective maybe, but still with an unsettling edge that gives you pause and refuses to let it simply slip over you.

We saw two sides of the composer's range recently in two works with a similar environmental theme both related to the sea. Premiered at the Brilliant Corners Festival in Belfast in 2025, All Earth Once Drowned with poet Cherry Smyth and the Decibel Ensemble managed to simultaneously celebrate the power, beauty and wonder of the sea while expressing anger at the catastrophic impact of environmental waste on this precious resource of nature. On the other hand a recording of Strange Waves in 2023 written for eight cellos, field recordings and electronics, the cellos all played in a multi-tracked recording by Kate Ellis was a more meditative piece drawing you into the sea, so to speak. Ed’s latest piece The Wilderness Voices uses a similar soloist layering technique, this time with the voice, supplemented with electronics.

Where Kate Ellis' cello was perfect for the rhythms and variable moods of the sea, the layered singing of mezzo-soprano Michelle O’Rourke brings an essential human element to the sentiments that form an integral part of the subject and mood of the new piece. As the composer explained in the introduction to the world premiere performance of the work, The Wilderness Voices started out with an environmental theme - clearly something that is foremost in the minds of many artists at the moment - but the death of his father at the time of composition played a part in how the piece developed. In the case of Kate Ellis on Strange Waves, the Covid pandemic lockdown made it easier for one musician to play all the parts, but there is also something surely of it being a matter of why seek more than one musician when you can have the best play all the parts? In the case of The Wilderness Voices there is a similar thought of why use more than one singer when Michelle O'Rourke can do it all herself. It's probably more a case however that the nature of this new work is very much more related to personal sentiments that can only be expressed by the human voice, or indeed an array of single human voices seeking to, well, presumably find a way out of the wilderness.

That's certainly more of a challenge to get that across in a 'live' performance, but it was one that Michelle O'Rourke proved capable of controlling to impressive effect. And there could hardly be a more suitable sound environment for the premiere of the work than the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University in Belfast, with its superb custom-built acoustics and speaker system capable of integrating the voice and electronics. Composed as a six-part 40-minute piece, the first section consists of gently introducing you into the sound world of a live vocalisations with a few echoing pre-recorded layers. The piece develops across each of the six parts, a low subsonic electronic boom introducing a drone like electronic backing in the second part, integrating and building with the layers and echoes of the multiple tracked voice recordings triggered by the singer.

Perhaps the layering of elements in Brian Irvine's musical-theatre piece Where We Bury the Bones was still in my mind from a performance at the Lyric Theatre the previous evening, but there seemed to be a similar searching quality to the work using considerably fewer elements, seeking not necessarily to reconcile the various layers of the voice, but to find a connecting theme that allowed all of them to co-exist and express itself in a way that words alone would be inadequate to describe. Gradually however, midway through the piece, a phrase formed from the vocalisations; "I am here now". Not an answer, not a revelation, but an acceptance of the only essential truth that one can say for certain about anything, that you are here now in the present.

There is comfort in that thought, but - how can I say this without sounding like I am denigrating the work? - you could almost see it as a meditative piece that brings you to place of self-awareness of being here and now in the present. Being Ed Bennett however the purpose of The Wilderness Voices is not to take you to a comfortable soothing place, and the fact that a piece of experimental contemporary music can be described as beautiful need not suggest that it is in any way compromised. The subsequent section may find that rhythmic pulse of affirmation, but soon the voices start to lose their coherence again - at least as far as words and rhythm are concerned - and the electronic interference takes over to a level of dissonance that comes close to feedback. Low feedback that eventually subsides, the emotions checked, a reassertion of control, the work ending with the formation of a new realisation and truth that needs to be similarly confronted and accommodated, the single word 'you'.

External links: Ed Bennett, Queen's University Belfast

Irvine - Where We Bury the Bones (Belfast, 2026)

Brian Irvine - Where We Bury the Bones

Dumbworld, 2026

Sinead Hayes, John McIlduff, Megan O'Neill, Stephanie Dufresne, Cristian Emmanuel Dirocie

The Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 11th March 2026

Where do you start? The last time I began a review with those words was in my years as a film reviewer having just watched a screening of Terrence Malik's film The Tree of Life. It was less a sense of bewilderment at what I had seen on the screen than a question provoked by the film's extraordinary scope and ambition. A bewildering overreach for some, utterly sublime as far as I was concerned, I saw it as an attempt by a visual artist to put across something that is impossible to put entirely into words alone. For similar reasons it seems an appropriate way to start a review of Where We Bury the Bones, a multi-disciplinary work created by Dumbworld team of John McIlduff & Kate Heffernan with music composed by Brian Irvine who, with an orchestra and a singer, have a few more tools at their disposal to approach a challenging subject.

The title has ominous connotations for the people of this island and I imagine it evokes similar horrors for people in many other places that have seen war and violence in recent decades, and indeed in the world today. That's not what the piece is about, although it could certainly be seen to be a part of it, as the work starts with the discovery of various artefacts during an archaeological dig in Kilkenny, one of which is a bone. One of the first considerations is to identify whether it is a human bone and to look for any signs of trauma, indications of an injury or violent death, as that would be the beginning of a story, a way of building a picture of a life. As an archaeologist René, in an onscreen message, considers that there are limitations on how much scientific enquiry can imagine, and wonders what an artist would make of such material. That's the beginning of Where We Bury the Bones.

Well, that's one starting point but we may actually need to go back further than that. Where indeed do you start to consider the circumstances that lead to an ancient bone being found in this part of the world? A narrative description has already set the scene, considering the historical formation of the valley, building up a picture through our understanding of the geology, chemistry, behaviours and patterns in nature, the valley hewn by ice and shaped by the flow of the river, but there is more than one starting point here, there are layers of history and the flow of time has also contributed to the picture. These are marked out by a number of musical and theatrical layers including a sung voice, technical and historical data feeds, dramatic presentation, a music score played by an 8-piece orchestra, dance movements, and a live projection of an actual scale model of the landscape in question.

"Where do you start?" I admit does apply to some extent with grappling with understanding what the work is about. Where We Bury the Bones started as a commission for the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2025, the work stemming from the questions that arise with the discovery of a single bone unearthed during archaeological excavations in Kilkenny’s Abbey Quarter. So the work is 'site specific' in a way, but evidently it has a much wider remit and perspective, so is indeed hard to know where to start. As a work of many layers, there are similarly many layers and ways to approach the work. Words are just one way, but that alone can never be entirely sufficient even if Megan O'Neill, dressed in white, appears to give voice to the bone itself. Interacting with the other elements however, how the music speaks and how bare technical facts meet with lived human experience - past, present and looking to the future - allows the viewer to piece together their own story and indeed their own part in the story.

The past is evoked in snatches of traditional Irish music, some the on-stage orchestra interacting with an on-screen musician, the present with the creation of a skateboard park that is overlaid on the site. On a voice-over, some of the skaters testify to its importance to the here and now, a place where community comes together but also a place where new stories are made and another layer of history and archaeological mystery may be laid down for the future. The scope of what is brought together over the running time of one hour is tremendous and Brian Irvine's music has a large part to play in creating that environment, creating the musical landscape to bring it all together. As a composer Irvine has never been tied down to a single style of music but uses whatever instruments and means of expression are necessary for any given work. His score for this work has a 'voice' without telling a ‘story’, the theatrical chamber orchestration reminding me of Louis Andriessen, but with a directness and purpose of its own, anchored in the landscape in its unearthing of people and history but liberated in the flow of time; past, present and future layered. 

There is no narrative line to tell you any of this. Where We Bury the Bones doesn't rely on theatrical conventions or familiar musical reference points or motifs, it doesn't settle for fitting it to preconceived ideas or tell you what you should be taking away from this. It does what it should do which is to let the medium determine the best way of getting the ideas across, building a picture, allowing the multi-disciplinary elements to create their own connections as well as creating the space for the individual in the audience to place themselves within it. If you come out of seeing an production wondering what it was all about, that is much better than having answers handed to you. In the case of the scope and ambition of what this work is about, answers would be impossible anyway in an hour-long performance, but it does nonetheless give you everything you need to think more deeply about our place in this world for a long time afterwards, along with the realisation that we take too much of it for granted.

External links: Dumbworld