DEC 2024 NEWSLETTER

Dec 2024

Dear friends,

Those of you who have been receiving these newsletters for the last years will know that as the days grow dark in December I turn my creative thoughts to the tradition of dark winter music that spans back centuries and add a new annual recording to my ever-growing ‘Christmas’ collection on bandcamp. For me it’s a kind of antidote to all the crass commodification of this season that overwhelms me, it feels sometimes like I’m drowning in late capitalism, with all its flashing screens, over-produced music and its never-ending push to constantly be ‘productive’ (whatever that means)….

I find great richness in drawing back to the traditions of darkness, of obscurity, sometimes baffled and bruised, but seeking some meaning in the time when nothing is growing, the nights long and cold, and we need poetry, melody and human solidarity more than ever. Its a quiet thing, not shouted from the rooftops of the city, but whispered at a low octave from a humble place. And these days I feel like being quiet is a rebel act.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER (WITH GAMELAN SPRÉACHA GEALA)

This year’s addition to the collection grew out of a season of making collaborations with the Gamelan Spréacha Geala (‘bright sparks’ in Irish) ensemble based in the nearby town of Skibbereen. This year we did quite a few performances together at various local festivals and in all the rehearsals preparing different pieces of music, we made this lovely recording of the old English winter carol ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, with many of the players using bows on the bronze instruments to create a shimmering, ghostly resonance. It really feels like the cold has dampened down all resonance and only quiet shimmers and the ringing of bells can be heard. I am also delighted that my son Ari played on this recording as one of the ensemble!

The whole collection can be downloaded at www.bandcamp.com/justingrounds and I will be giving any proceeds from downloads to Musicians Without Borders, a charity supporting music teachers and music therapists in Gaza to keep making music with kids throughout the devastation they are living through.

LIVE IMPROVISATION FROM UILLINN DANCE SEASON

At the end of October I brought together my collaborators Yonit Kosovske (harpsichord), Sarah Groser (viola da gamba), Vlad Smishkewych (percussion) and the wonderful Chloé Pisco (contemporary dancer) to put on a full concert program as the final performance of the Uillinn Dance Season here in West Cork, Ireland. As well as playing works by contemporary composers Will Ayton, Fiona Linane and Brooke Green, we also performed the premiere of our multi-media piece ‘Seams in my Socks’ and my work ‘Triple Spiral’ to end. But there was a magical moment right at the beginning of the concert when Sarah, Chloé and myself decided to open the show with an improvisation. Luckily Vlad caught it all on two cameras, and I’m delighted to share it with you here.

With huge thanks for the continued support from my patreon community, who contribute the price of a cup of coffee per month and enable me to document and create recordings, videos, behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage, and of tips and ideas from my own practice. Their funds helped me to put together this film and many more, and even more than that it is a really strengthening feeling for an independent artist like myself to know that there is a community of people supporting me morally, as well as with their subscriptions. It helps me in the lonely moments in the studio when the work feels overwhelming and I am lost for a direction! So THANK YOU PATRONS! (And if you’d like to get yourself a Christmas present, and support me too, do consider joining and being a part of the process of making all this music)

THIS YEAR’S EXPERIMENT

After reading books like ‘Digital Minimalsim’ by Cal Newport and ‘How to do Nothing’ by Jenny Odell, I decided at the beginning of 2024 to try an experiment in ‘re-analoging’. I’ve become more and more aware of the ways the technologies which seemed so promising 10 years ago have become tarnished by the ways the tech companies have tweaked them to extract the maximum profit out of us, the ‘users’. Social media is just noise to me, a huge cacophony of opposing voices all shouting over the others, and the endless scroll is a recipe for killing our ability to concentrate and spend time well. The smartphone (which in its original form was an excellent iPod/phone combo) has become an object of extreme addiction, robbing us of our ability to have silence, down-time, boredom, reflection. And email…..don’t get me started! (Except this lovely newsletter habit!)

Like a growing number of people around the world, I wanted to see how it would be to rediscover some of the older technologies that have been brushed aside in the race for newness. It made me think - why do I love the baroque violin? It’s a design that found its apex in about 1720 and after that, anything added to the design cost too much for what it was able to gain. Like the baroque bow - sure, a modern bow is longer, heavier, more adjustable, but the characteristic of sound and phrasing that is lost in this race for volume and sustain just isn’t worth it in my opinion.

So I started asking this question about lots of the new and in-vogue technologies - what does this convenience cost me? I decided to abscond from all social media (beautiful silence instead of noise!) and instead concentrate my efforts in writing and sharing this monthly newsletter - where I can delve into things more meaningfully, and only for you, my dear readers, but not everyone and everywhere. I decided to get back to my old hobby of writing handwritten letters to people I hadn’t seen in some time. The slowness of the task, and the smooth flow of my Lamy fountain pen, meant it became a sort of meditation, a prayer conjuring up that person into my solitude, with all the memories and love that exist there. And the fact that if I ever did receive a response it wouldn’t be instantaneous, only highlighted the dopamine addiction we have to ‘likes’. I found that I wasn’t needing responses or validations, but that the process was enough to satisfy me.

I bought a flip-phone (albeit one that allows WhatsApp - something which one can’t seem to escape) and just keep on it the apps for messaging and telephone. It became a useful tool again, and I got to start carrying around my beloved Fuji X100 camera and taking photographs for the love of it -printing them and sending them as cards. I have even enjoyed recording outside of the DAW box, live and onto an SD card, or onto my reel to reel tape machine, and find that my mind is more in the flow of the performance, without the need to sync to the click or grid that a DAW defaults to. I’m more keen than ever now to expand my studio to have a 16 track tape machine and offer people that older recording experience.

My first selfie, medium format Ilford film, circa 2002

Have I become a luddite? I don’t think so. My life has become quieter, less harried, more thoughtful. I’m enjoying the technologies that enrich me - like a fountain pen, a violin, a book or a tape machine. I like technology, but am much more discerning about how it can serve me, or hinder me. And in a world where everything is available at all times I’m wondering if it all just loses it’s value? Sometimes things that need a bit of work are far more rewarding.

The moment that reaffirmed it all for me was going to see one of my favourite bands ‘Godspeed You! Black Emperor’ in Dublin in September. They had battered old amps and well-used pedal boards and made such glorious, powerful, joyful and terrifying music in the moment, together, as an ensemble. But the best part of all was standing next to the four 16mm film projectors, and witnessing the projectionist manipulate homemade film loops in real time, sometimes holding the film static so the celluloid burned and melted on the lens, all projected onto the band. There was something so real, so tangible and moving about the whole experience, that I’ve never felt with digital laptop projections. It took so much work, but it was worth it, and powerful.

So my experiment has become a lifestyle and a joyful and quiet one at that.

I wish you peace and rest over the Christmas break - and hopeful things for 2025.

With love

Justin

NOV 2024 Newsletter

November 2024

Dear friends,

It’s been a month full of so much music, loss, grief, creativity and connection. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by how life can be so full of beauty and sadness all at once, so inextricably entwined. I am so glad I have a violin to help me connect it all up into something I can share with my community, near and far. Music is such a vital part of our lives, both individually, and collectively - it connects us to our deeper selves, it helps our brains and bodies function, and it helps us create rich societies, where tension and resolution can be made possible, where sadness and beauty can be safely embraced.

Here in Ireland where I live, at this time of year we celebrate an ancient festival called Samhain, which pre-dates halloween, and is held in the midpoint between the autumn and winter equinoxes. It is a time to embrace the darkness, and the things we bury deep down inside ourselves. They say the veil between worlds is thin at this time, which is a rich image we could interpret in so many ways….

I have been really busy with making collaborations with the gamelan ensemble based here in Skibbereen, which I made a piece with last Samhain, and it was so well received that the festival organisers asked if we could develop it further and then perform it in the big finale with the fire dancers! Gamelan refers to the traditional music and instruments of Indonesia, made up of these wonderful bronze gongs and percussion instruments. They are all in a very unusual tuning, so I have to try to match this on the violin. Together with Kevin MacNally (the leader of the ensemble) we have created quite a few collaborative pieces now, including some traditional Irish pieces played on these instruments! Watch out for a release in next month’s newsletter.

The traditional gamelan instruments in place ready for our Samhain festival performance.

TRIPLE SPIRAL LIVE CONCERT

After composing the trio sonata ‘Triple Spiral’ last year, and then making the film and premiere performance in Limerick, we finally brought the piece to life in a full concert program at the Uillinn Dance Season. Yumi Lee, who danced in the film, couldn’t make the performance so I went looking for a new contemporary dancer to fill the role and found the wonderful Chloé Pisco, who was back in her hometown (also my home!) for a while in between doing amazing projects like dancing with humpback whales!

We were given use of the space we would perform in for 2 days, and so gathered Yonit Kosovske (harpsichord), Sarah Groser (viola da gamba) and Vlad Smishkewych (percussion) together with myself and Chloé to work on creating a full concert of contemporary music and dance. The program featured the world premiere of my collaboration with Yonit, entitled ‘Seams in my Socks’ - an audio visual work exploring neurodivergent ‘stimming’, as well as Triple Spiral, and works by Fiona Linane, Brook Green and Will Ayton. Sarah, Chloé and myself opened the concert with an extended improvisation between baroque violin, viola da gamba and dancer. (For a sneak peek at this from rehearsal, head to this link at my PATREON page, where I have shared the whole rehearsal improvisation with the patreon community.)

Chloé, Sarah and myself in rehearsal

Sarah, Yonit, Vlad, myself, Chloé

NOVEMBER BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

As I do a lot of work as a musician and composer in healthcare settings, I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of a new book by Daniel Levitin called ‘I heard there was a secret chord: Music as Medicine’. In the meantime, I ordered ‘The World in Six Songs’ from the local library and found it to be an absolutely fascinating and absorbing read all about how music played a pivotal role in the formation of our brains, the evolution of language, thought and culture. He is both musician and scientist and straddles both worlds extremely well. Highly recommended.

I borrowed ‘On Time’ from Vlad when I was up in Limerick working on some music, and since my fascination with the circadian rhythm and my experiments with avoiding jetlag, this book is a further meditation on our experience of time, why it goes fast or slow, and how we can try to become masters of our time, rather than slaves to it…

I was loaned ‘Monolithic Undertow’ by Harry Sword from Mark, one of the organisers of the Samhain Festival and I’ve just started it. It’s a deep exploration of the drone - in culture, religion, science and music, and goes on a journey from neolithic beginnings to Sufi mystics, Indian raga and ritual amp worship of drone-metal band Sunn 0))). ‘The drone exists outside of us, but also -paradoxically - within us all; an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel…’

OCT 2024 Newsletter

Dear friends

There was a frost on the ground this morning, the sun is low in the sky and everything feels crisp and autumnal. It’s amazing how the seasons change and bring with them such different perspectives. On Thursday night the Aurora Borealis was visible about the little town of Clonakilty where I live….but I didn’t see it until the next morning when I got lots of pictures sent to me! I feel like those creative days in the cabin in the Canadian summer were so long ago now! I hit the ground running on returning to Ireland with rehearsals in Limerick, the wonderful Clonakilty International Guitar Festival(which I am a sound engineer for) and lots of really enriching music sessions in community hospitals as part of my work with Arts for Health.

TRIPLE SPIRAL LIVE CONCERT: OCT 29

Along with Yonit Kosovske (harpsichord), Sarah Grosser (viola da gamba) and Chloe Pisco (contemporary dancer) I will be staging my work Triple Spiral in a live concert as part of the Uillinn Dance Season in Skibbereen, Ireland on October 29th. This is a rare opportunity to see this work performed live with dance, and the program will also feature new works by composers Tal Arbel, Will Ayton and Fiona Linnane, as well as the world premiere of my new collaboration with Yonit entitled ‘SEAMS IN MY SOCKS’ - an audio visual exploration of neurodiverse ‘stimming’ for harpsichord, tape and visual projections.

Tickets are limited and on sale at this Eventbrite link. Do come along if you are in the area!

ORCHESTRA OF LOST FUTURES

I’m delighted to share with you a film of a very playful musical event I put together for my friend Donal O'Sullivan's poetry/jazz event 'Snag Notes 2' on Culture Night this year in the Clonakilty Community Arts Centre.

(Fun fact: 'Snag' means 'jazz' in Irish language)

I had had in my mind for some years a faint idea of an instrumental trio I wanted to put together inspired by Australia's 'The Dirty Three' - violin, electric guitar and drums. And playing instrumental improvised music. This was a great event in which to try this idea out! I decided on a format where I would write song titles and prompts on cards for each of the musicians. The musicians can interpret these as they like. Then I gave 'wild cards' to everyone in the audience, to play whenever they liked, giving to a musician to change what they're doing. These were a set of Brian Eno's 'Oblique Strategy' cards that I had printed and used at a workshop I did earlier in the year.

The result was a lot of fun and the audience really enjoyed it! My son played the first wild card. Then that got the audience going!

There was one more piece, a very jazzy swing number, that we played at the end, but my camera stopped recording and didn’t catch it. I did however get the audio, which I delivered this month as a little bonus gift to my patreon community. Do head over there and consider joining to get lots of music, videos and behind the scenes stuff from my various projects.

OCTOBER BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Questlove is a creative force to be reckoned with - drummer and co-founder of the legendary hip-hop band ‘The Roots’, writer, DJ, film-maker and much more, he’s been a huge influence on artists across the board. In fact, I did his ‘Masterclass’ series on DJing and music curation and it set so many fires going in my brain, I went out and bought a battery powered scratch turntable! I saw this book in the library and grabbed it. Now, I’ve read a lot of books on creativity over the years, and this one started out with a lot of name dropping and tangents, but once getting into it, it was like no other book I’d read - a deep dive into Questlove’s thoughts, his creative life, blocks, strategies, wisdom…and lots of fascinating stories about other artists he works with and their ways of creating.

‘A Simpler Life’ is one of the many books created by ‘The School of Life’ - a collaboration of writers, psychologists, psychotherapists and philosophers, whose mission is to ‘bring about healing, growth, calm and self-understanding’. All their books I have read are very well written, clear and wise, they offer practical and very generous ways of transcending the blocks and problems we might face in life. This little tome was enlightening in the positive and perhaps unexpected ways we can aim for more simplicity in our everyday pursuits, relationships and possessions - always asking the question of what this thing/person/activity really means to us and then prompting us to either move on from it, or bring it to a place of deeper resonance.

Finally, ‘Smash the Patriarchy’ was a fun find while browsing the graphic novel section of the library that my son has got me into. There are so many wonderful graphic novels (I also found a great one about Leonard Cohen’s life) and this one tracks the story of patriarchy through history, how far we have come, and what we can do to really shape our systems and attitudes to be much more feminist. A great read.

I hope autumn treats you gently, and would love to see you at a concert some time.

With sweet hummings,

Justin

PS. If you’re in Cork or Kinsale, I’m playing 2 shows with Boa Morte, the wonderful band I have been writing and arranging strings and clarinets with for the last few years. 20th Oct at Primm’s Bookshop, Kinsale and 1st Nov at Coughlan’s Cork.

SEPT 2024 NEWSLETTER

Dear friends,

I have spent the last month in Canada, spending a lot of time in the little cabin where I have composed a lot of music over the last decade. I was reading Cal Newport’s book ‘Slow Productivity’ and in there he speaks about the importance of finding simple environments outside of normal life to retreat to and concentrate on bigger projects. Many artists and writers through history have found places, from coffee shops to remote cabins, to do their dreaming, thinking and creating. I was struck that I have been very blessed (through my wife’s family) to have access to this little ‘bunkie’ in the woods near a lake in Ontario, and over the years have used it for doing much initial composing work on some of my bigger projects, such as ‘Passacaglia Apis’, ‘The Embracing Universe’ and ‘Triple Spiral’. A few years ago, I took some time in another little cabin closer to home, and made a short film about the importance of seeking out these spaces.

SPIRAL 3 BRAND NEW ARRANGEMENT

I always love hearing from people around the world who have enjoyed or interacted with my music! Its such an energising thing for a composer to know somehow or other, often in unusual ways, that your music is making its way into the world and finding listeners. After we released the TRIPLE SPIRAL film last year, I got an email out of the blue from a Spanish musician called Josep Maria Saperas Lafarga, asking if he could have permission to make his own arrangement of the 3rd Spiral for his ensemble of recorder students! Of course I was only delighted for this - and then he went on to send me a video of the final year performance of the piece with his ensemble (and me on a screen playing the violin part!) and subsequently, also a video he made in his own studio playing all the parts, which so captures the energy and heart of the piece. He gave me permission to share it with you all here:

SEPTEMBER BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Its been a summer of bringing bags of books from the library to the cabin and devouring them on down time! ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ by Gabrielle Zevin was recommended to me by pal and fellow composer Will Gregory, and I’m so grateful as it was a wonderful read! (So now I’m telling you! Grab a copy and settle in) It’s a love story of two friends who create video games together and explores the complex worlds of games, collaboration, friendship and how we can express difficult parts of ourselves through the experience of playing games together.

‘Solitude’ by Michael Harris is a deep exploration of the ways elements of solitude are being lost in all the different facets of life - from our ability to deeply concentrate, to our ability to be alone with our thoughts. Quoting Vivian Gornick: ‘To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room. I alone infuse the silence.’

Finally, a book I grabbed as I so loved the title (while I was looking for things in the library!) ‘What you are looking for is in the library’ by Michiko Aoyama is a charming story about the way a small community library and enigmatic librarian have a profound and transformative effect of a collection of different people living in the neighbourhood. Gentle, powerful and deeply human.

Looking forward to getting home to Ireland for the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival which starts on 19th Sept. And then a live performance of Triple Spiral in October at the Uillinn Dance Season.

Until next month,

Justin

Aug 2024 Newsletter

Dear friends,

Its been a really lovely few weeks of concerts - with our Barefoot Baroque tour playing shows all around West Cork (nice pic above taken by my pal Camilla Griehsel our wonderful Alto singer) and then Monday this week saw the big premiere performance of my work ‘Children of Lir’ to a sold out audience at the Skibbereen Arts Festival. It was a magical evening, with incredible heartfelt performances by dear ensemble Eva Coyle, Katy Salvidge, Tess Leak, Tadhg Peel-Walsh, Jan Leak and the most beautiful contemporary dance from Rosie Leak. All held to honour the memory of the late Robert Harris who commissioned the work back in 2019. As his wife Finola said in her speech, ‘It is so so sad that Robert is not here to hear the premiere performance of this wonderful music, but what a way to celebrate him!’ I am still reeling from the reaction from the audience, young and old, who gave 2 standing ovations, many with tears in their eyes. As a composer of music, this is such a wonderful gift.

The ensemble at the Children of Lir premiere on Monday night.

WATCH CHILDREN OF LIR FILM

Download ‘Children of Lir’ here. All proceeds go to support Amici Dance Company, where Rosie is an associate member.

AUGUST BOOK RECOMMENDATION

I read Jenny Odell’s keynote talk from the EYEO festival in 2017 and was immediately struck by how important her thesis was in an age of mass distraction and the new attention economy. Doing nothing in her eyes means doing things that don’t have a financial incentive, or productivity increase, but enrich us in much deeper ways - things like rediscovering listening to birds, sitting in common spaces, and getting to know, and care for, your neighbours. Things that may seem banal suddenly take a power as a strong act of resistance against the strong prevailing currents of big tech and media which are taking over more and more of our lives. She is an artist, teacher and writer and I would recommend this book to anyone who feels that more and more of their time and headspace seems to be being hijacked by external economic forces.

I hope you have lots of lovely ‘nothing’ time this summer.

Justin

July 24 Newsletter

Dear friends,

Our annual Barefoot Baroque tour of concerts begins next Wednesday.

We have been doing this wonderful week of concerts since 2017 when I invited my friends Tess Leak (cellist) and Katy Salvidge (harp/recorder) to make a summer tour of informal concerts in community spaces around the islands and towns of West Cork, with the aim to make classical music experiences accessible to young and old, in a relaxed and down-to-earth atmosphere. The tour became a regular summer outing, adding German viola player Gideon Wieck (whom we met while he was volunteering in Baltimore!), as well as the well-loved Alto singer Camilla Griehsal from Schull.

We look forward to the tour each year as it is always a refreshing and magical week of concerts for all. This year we are presenting a specially curated sequence of music and poetry I’ve been putting together to provide consolation and inspiration during these troubled times we are living through. All concerts are free entry and open to young and old. A donation hat is passed around at the end of each night for the musicians. If you’re in the area (or even fancy making a journey!) it would be great to see you at one of the concerts!

CHILDREN OF LIR PREMIERE PERFORMANCE JULY 29

Robert Harris was a vibrant member of West Cork’s cultural scene and a member of the board of Uillinn. In 2019 he approached me to commission a new musical work based on the mythological story of the ‘Children of Lir’ for his wife Finola’s birthday gift. I created a work for voices, piano, cello and concertina in three parts, bringing the myth into the current day with its theme of the power of creativity in the midst of suffering, exclusion and displacement.

The work could not be performed at the time due to Covid19 restrictions, but in the meantime I set to making a studio recording and a film to accompany the piece, featuring wonderful contemporary dancer Rosie Leak, who I was able to film on a trip over to UK last year. Sadly, Robert never got to see the final film as he passed away tragically following a car accident in March this year.

This premiere performance in the Skibbereen Arts Festival will be a tribute to Robert’s life and his contribution to the musical and cultural life of West Cork. Eva Coyle will be singing in the piece and also playing ‘Finola’s Jig’ on accordion in the final section - composed originally for Robert to play, as he played concertina and accordion and had a great love of folk music.

The concert will also feature another of my pieces; ‘I Shall Make for my Own Castle’ for phono-fiddle, strings and bassoon, which was commissioned by cellist Tess Leak for her Uillinn exhibition in 2015 and features her mother Jan Leak on bassoon. 

JULY BOOK RECOMMENDATION

It’s easy to get really depressed if, like me, you’re trying your best to live as sustainably as possible, yet all over the newspapers we read catastrophe news stories of how desperate the climate crises is getting. If so, this is the book for you! Hannah Ritchie is a data scientist and senior researcher at the University of Oxford, and she presents the data in a very interesting way with the argument that our technologies are getting cleaner and more affordable, we have already peaked in carbon emissions and if we can act positively and collectively doing simple things such as embracing clean energy systems and sustainable transport systems and adopting a plant-based diet, we can make huge steps towards a better world! Erudite, clearly presented and highly recommended!

Hope to see you out at one of the concerts this month!

Justin

May 24 Newsletter

Dear friends,

It’s been a month full of wonderful violin projects, from teaching at the annual baroque strings course at Cork School of Music (wonderful teenagers that give me much hope for the future!), to a new live recording of a long form violin and electronics improvisation, to last weekend’s performance of Purcell’s opera ‘Dido and Aeneas’ in Skibbereen Town Hall. It was an extraordinary performance, and when we finally arrived at Dido’s famous lament aria it felt like everyone in the room was collectively resonating with that universal human sorrow and longing that is so perfectly encapsulated in the music. (Check out Jeff Buckley’s take on it) My neighbour the artist Michael Wright took a welcome break from building his studio to come and sit and sketch in the dress rehearsal - wonderful energetic drawing below:

‘MAUNDY THURSDAY” - NEW VIOLIN STUDIES SERIES RELEASE

On Maundy Thursday this year I was invited to come and play an improvisation at the Church of the Ascension in Timoleague, in the dark, after the altar had been stripped and folk were sitting silently in the dark, illuminated only by a few bare candles. I responded to the void of darkness, the bare building and the resonance of this night of meditation on violence and grace. I wanted to ring a bell into the sense of futility that has filled me in the months since the violence began in both Ukraine and Gaza.

I have been toying with a new idea to release a series of live violin improvisations called ‘Violin Studies’ - to enter unusual and disregarded spaces and respond directly to their ambience and resonance with music.

‘Maundy Thursday’ is the first of this series and is now available to download (for whatever price you choose) at my bandcamp page. Please do click the link below and have a listen and consider downloading it - all the proceeds from this track will be donated to Doctors Without Borders work in Gaza.

MAY BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

As a homeschooling Dad I’m already following a different path with my kid, and really interested in these dynamics so Michaeleen Doucleff’s ‘Hunt, Gather, Parent’ was a fascinating and inspiring find. A scientist and anthropologist who made radio programs with tribes and societies less affected by the modern western culture she noticed that the parents and kids are more relaxed, less stressed, collaborative and helpful to each other. This book delves into some ancient cultures and is a profoundly positive reflection on kids and parents - refreshing in a world that seems to pit one against the other.

I had never heard Errollyn Wallen’s music before, but when I saw the title of this book ‘Becoming a Composer’ I felt I had to give it a read. Not only is she a prolific and highly creative artist (22 operas and counting!!!) but she writes really openly about the process of composing a work, from initial ideas, to sketches, to practical problems, working with commissioners, players etc as well as stories from her childhood….Highly recommended.

I’m only half way through ‘A Book of Noises; Notes on the Auraculous’ by Caspar Henderson, but it has sparked my curiosity and imagination in untold ways and left me wanting to explore new sounds, new instruments, new ways of making music. It is a beautifully written study of sounds - from the sounds of the universe in the cosmophony, to earth (geophony), the sounds of life (biophony) and finally the sounds of humanity (anthropophony).

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you - do send me a line! Or a book recommendation. If you’d like to receive the new music, videos, studio tips and film music every month, I have a patreon community here. For the price of a coffee you can directly support my work and interact as projects take shape.

Love and here’s to longer evenings and warmer days,

Justin

March 24 Newsletter

Easter Week 2024

Dear friends,

I’m writing this on a train headed south and home from Belfast where I have just spent two really fun and creative days making music for a very unique film project in an old church building in the city centre. It is a project bringing together a team of friends of mine who are an artist, filmmaker, photographer, poet and radical theologian. It’s been playful and experimental and the sort of environment that I thrive in - throwing ideas to each other and responding to create something great. It gives me a lot of hope that things like this are still happening in the world, a shared sense of human connection, trust, collaboration and joy. An embrace of the contradictions of life, without a need to provide answers, but simply to revel in the beautiful mystery of it all.

BUILD YOUR OWN FILM MUSIC

I do more and more music for film scores these days, and am also very encouraged by all the people making their own films now that the tech is so accessible. My son and I spent a day doing a filmmaking workshop and since then I've been thinking hard about how to make film music for people to access that is flexible and adaptable so that you can use it to build your own scores that fit the timing and dynamic of your films. Here's a solution I've come up with - delivering you a piece in small building blocks that you can use how you like. Below is a little video showing  how to stick them into your editing software and start to build a score.

If you're interested in joining the CINEMATOGRAPHERS tier on my Patreon community, it’s where I deliver film music, and if you're signed up, even just for a month, you can use any of this music in your films/podcasts etc. There's a library of pieces on the patreon feed, just search the tag 'FILM MUSIC' and I'm always open to composing something for a specific need - so write me a message and let me know what you're working on.

CINEMATOGRAPHERS on Patreon

MARCH BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

I’ve been immersed in poetry, philosophy and practicality this month. I first discovered Leanne O’Sullivan’s poetry through my pal Pádraig Ó Tuama who presents the wonderful podcast ‘Poetry Unbound’. O’Sullivan comes from the Beara peninsula, even further west than I live in county Cork and this collection is a deep journey through the period where her husband suffered an infection of the brain and was in a coma for 3 weeks, during which he was lead out of the coma by visions of animals and the natural world. Its a beautiful reflection on love, human suffering, the natural world and the beings that dwell in it.

I was given philosopher Darian Leader’s ‘Hands’ some years ago and it then was a book study on the patreon site of Peter Rollins which I support monthly. Its a fascinating study of how human progress and development can be viewed through the lens of our hands, from babies clutching their parents’ fingers through to adults everywhere clutching their iPhones!

Since I made my 2024 new year resolution to re-analog my life, I’ve been looking at new ways to re-assess the technologies we all seem to be encompassed by, and try to find ways of re-discovering the things we have lost in the advent of these fast all-encompassing devices. Cal Newport’s ‘Digital Minimalism’ is a powerful manifesto for this project. He’s a computer science professor in the USA and so by no means a Neo-luddite! He presents a strong argument for a re-assessment of the smartphone and social media, their toxic addictive qualities, the loss of solitude and deep concentration, and how we can free ourselves from the grip of the ‘attention economy’. I would recommend this book if, like me, you feel that you have been distracted from the people and work that are important to you, and long to dive back into the deep joy of finding flow.

In fact, since reading this book, I have ditched my iPhone and bought a cheap flip-phone. I’m also leaving behind me the world of Instagram and Facebook and will continue to focus my energy on writing this newsletter to you all. Its ‘slow media’ in the best sense and I hope you find some enrichment in it!

I endeavour to continue making music, writing letters, and offering insights and tips for creativity each month for my patreon community, who in turn help provide funds to make bigger projects happen. I appreciate you all so much.

Love and happy easter,

Justin

February 24 Newsletter

Feb 2024

Dear friends,

Wishing you all a happy new year! Thursday was St.Brigid’s day here in Ireland which marks the first day of spring - here’s to the lengthening of the days and the awakening of creativity after what felt like a dark and stormy winter. Welcome to the first newsletter of 2024 - thanks for reading and being a part of what my friend the composer Tom Adams calls ‘Slow Social Media’ ! I made it my new year’s resolution to write more handwritten letters and ‘re-analog’ my life a bit more….shoot some photographs on film, hammer away on my typewriter, and read real books. Although this newletter is being typed on my computer, it certainly feels more ‘analog’ and its a practice I’m enjoying - sending on news of musical projects, my creative thoughts and of course some book recommendations.

Over Christmas I went to the UK to spend time with family and friends, and as we always travel on trains and ferries I bring with me a faithful bag of essential things so I can be creative while travelling. Its all stuff that I bring when on 'holiday' (ie. not working professionally on anything) and such times are great because the mind can rest and be playful. 

I thought you guys might enjoy seeing what I carry around with me - maybe you'll get some tips or ideas. I made a full write up of all the things and some stories behind them over on my patreon page - its a free public post so if you want to read more do click over there for the full article.

CORK CREATIVE PODCAST

In December I was invited to be part of a podcast series all about creative people living and working in Cork. Geraldine Hennessy came to my home studio and we sat and had a really great conversation for the best part of an hour, discussing musical influences, inspirations, my work flow and even getting a bit political near then end. Music for president! Do click on the image above if you want to have a listen. (I like to listen to podcasts while washing up….)

On my bookshelf….

I enjoyed some wonderful bookshop visits over Christmas and picked up some great books. I actually have had to build another bookshelf in my studio, such is my love of them!

Chomsky and Pappé’s On Palestine is timely reading to get a really focused and nuanced analysis of the past, present and future of the situation and what we can do as activists which will really aid people on the streets of Gaza….

Lemn Sissay is a poet from Manchester who visited my school when I was 16 and really inspired me to start writing and being creative and out-there. I love this collection Let the Light Pour In as he wrote a 4 line poem every morning for 10 years to help himself out of the doldrums. This is the best of them. Its a practice we’ve been trying in our household and its wonderful!

A Sabbatical in Leipzig by Irish writer and artist Adrian Duncan is a strange and oddly beautiful novel which is told as a first person narrative of a meticulous and methodical engineer with an eye for detail and system but plays out some heartbreaking grief and loss as he goes through his memories of a day visiting the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Its like no novel I have every read before and stayed with me for many weeks after finishing it.

That’s all for now. 2024 holds some exciting musical collaborations and performances which I will let you know about as the year progresses. I’m also trying my best to carve out some alone time in my studio to work on a new live violin/electronics/video projection show with max patches I have written to make audio-reactive video.

If you’d like to help support this work with the price of a cup of coffee per month and receive videos, music, tips and updates monthly do consider joining my patreon community. Its a really wonderful way to directly support artists in this new streaming paradigm. I support some unique creators on patreon and as well as getting great benefits, it also just feels right to give a little bit back towards keeping an independent culture alive.

Go well into the spring.

Justin

December 23 Newsletter

December 2023

Dear friends,

Every year at this time, as winter deepens here in Ireland and we make our way through advent, the streets filling with all the lights, decorations and all the cheer of Christmas, I set myself a final musical project of the year to take a more obscure, often dark and lesser known Christmas carol and make my own arrangement and recording of it.

I've been doing it for some years, and as well as sending out to family and friends, , I have collected all of the music together as a downloadable album simply called 'Christmas' over on bandcamp....it grows every year. 

There is so much dark and mystical music that has been composed over the centuries around this feast in the middle of winter. Its a shame that we only tend to get the upbeat pop classics with their sleigh bells and uplifting key changes on the radio and in all the shops. How about we embrace some mystery, some dark and let the unknown in....

Carol of the Bells is an old Ukrainian carol, and so it felt right to celebrate it this year, after all that poor country and its people have been through. It has such a simple melodic motif and it works perfectly plucked through a loop pedal....Then the underlying bass line echos the ringing of bells, and for this performance and recording I sampled one of the big gongs of the Gamelan (I am falling so in love with!) and set it to be controlled by a midi foot pedal.

Enjoy the video above, recorded live in one take on a rig powered by a phone battery, in the stairwell of DeBarra’s Folk Club, my local venue and spiritual home. If you’d like to receive the studio recording as a download as well as a video showing how I put the battery powered loop rig together, head to the Patreon site.

Or click here to get the whole Christmas collection at bandcamp - pay what you like…

CHRISTMAS RECORD ON BANDCAMP

OTHER MUSIC PROJECTS FROM 2023

Part of my varied work as a composer is with the Arts for Health team here in West Cork, Ireland, as resident composer in the Skibbereen Community Hospital working week in and week out with older residents of the hospital to engage with their own musical creativity and create work that honours their voices. Its a truly wonderful project and I am enriched by these people in all of my musical practice - I’m learning so much about what it means to be alive, to create meaning and connection, to be creative in so many different ways that aren’t celebrated in the mainstream. So I wanted to share a film I helped to make this year called ‘Last Train to Nowhere’ which is a collaboration of poetry, soundscape, film, drawing and animation, and was premiered at the national Bealtine Festival in May

Work in progress - I’m currently working with director Philippa Donnellan, dancer Justine Cooper (pictured in the window!) and photographer Tomasz Madajczak on a new dance work to be performed in 2024….And I am not just composing the score but also being pulled into the dance itself!

Another really wonderful project was composing and recording the score for this beautiful feature length film by Aoife Desmond called ‘Bury Our Hearts At The Bend of the River’. It was all shot on 16mm film and hand processed, and follows the River Lee from its source in the mountains, through the city of Cork to where it meets the sea at Rochestown Point. I created the score using a minimal sound palette which melds with field recordings I processed. I will be showing some of my working process in videos on the patreon site next year….. So if you’d like to know more about the composing process do join the patreon and say hello!

ON MY BOOKSHELF….

I have a nice little system these days for finding good books - in my attempts to limit the influence and control of social media I signed up for various mailing lists from artists/writers/bookshops that I admire and want to hear from - then every week or month I get an inspiring email to read, rather than the endless scrolling! Bookshop.org is great and supports independent bookshops rather than Amazon - and they send a weekly email with reading recommendations. I see books I might enjoy and then I order them from my local library on their app.

‘The Practicing Mind’ is a very practical guide to practicing well - something I have spent most of my life trying to do in music, but also now helping my homeschooling son learn - its also about finding happiness in the process rather than the goal. A very important part of creativity in all its forms!

A friend of mine had told me she was reading ‘Turlough’ by Irish writer Brian Keenan and seeing as I frequently play the music of Turlough O’Carolan, the blind harper and composer  from 18th century Ireland, I had to get my hands on this book. Apparently the spirit of Carolan visited Keenan many times while he was in captivity as a hostage in Beruit and so on his release he wanted to write as an offer of thanks.

Finally, ‘How Modern Media Destroys Our Minds’ is from a series of incredible books created by ‘The School of Life’ - a collective of philosophers, psychotherapists, artists etc. I have been reading ‘Big Ideas for Curious Minds’ and ‘What Adults Don’t Know About Art’ with my son and we are loving them. This one I read myself and its a clarion call to retreat from the onslaught of hate/envy/hype/catastrophy/depression that the modern media and social media is designed to create, and forge a more quiet, slow, happier, less sharable life.

(If you’re interested in this, another great writer and thinker on this topic is Jaron Lanier with ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now’)

Wishing you all a very peaceful Christmas season.

Justin

November 23 Newsletter

November 2024

Dear friends,

Welcome to the dark season! Here in our little creative town in the South West of Ireland we have an extraordinary festival every November for Samhain where artists, performers, dancers, composers, mask makers and philosophers all share their talents to celebrate this time of the year and embrace the dark.

SAMHAIN (pronounced 'sow-win') is the first of four traditional festivals on the old Irish calendar celebrating the arrival of Winter. Traditionally, Winter is celebrated as the first, not the last season of the Celtic year; the darkness from which all light emerges. This was a philosophy that carried into all areas of our lives.

Every people have enshrined in their culture a special time of year when the gates of perception are flung open and otherworldly spirits walk among the living. As a festival of birth, death and ancestral ceremony, Samhain stands on this threshold between worlds. This is also a time when our ancestral wildness has an opportunity to emerge; A chance to engage with and to celebrate the primordial wildness that dwells inside each of us.

This year the organisers of the festival approached me with the invitation to create a musical collaboration with the local Gamelan orchestra (GAMELAN - is a traditional instrumental ensemble from Java and Bali, made up predominantly of bronze percussion instruments). I was of course super inspired to do something crazy. Here is a wonderful video of the collaboration:

Many thanks go to my community on patreon whose support helped this video come into being - its wonderful for me to be making these projects with little funding from elsewhere, but knowing that I have a community of patrons whose financial (from $3/month support as well as ideas and comments and general encouragement spur me on to make them happen! If you’d like to join the community, do head over to the link below - there’s loads more info on how we made the music and monthly music and videos/blogs to feast on!

TRIPLE SPIRAL NOW AVAILABLE TO STREAM OR PURCHASE

After a fantastic launch show at the Hunt Museum in Limerick on Culture Night in September, our film ‘Triple Spiral’ is now available to stream or purchase on the Now and Then Media website. Featuring one of my brand new works for harpsichord/violin/viola da gamba and the mesmerising contemporary dance of Yumi Lee, it’s a hypnotic and energising performance film we made in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick back in July.

Stream TRIPLE SPIRAL

ON MY BOOKSHELF….

‘Mastery’ by Robert Greene is an illuminating and detailed analysis of some of the great masters of their art over history - from Da Vinci to John Coltrane - and the patterns and stages they went through to become what they were. It is an inspiring read which spurs me on to practice well, stay inquisitive and seek mentors at all stages of my development.

‘What I know About Running Coffee Shops’ is brilliantly written by Colin Harmon, Irish champion barista and the owner of my favourite coffee shop in Dublin for many years, 3fE - where Pearse McGloughlin and I would wind down over an espresso while on tour with Idiot Songs….Although I have no intention of ever starting a coffee shop, I love good coffee and am fascinated by the things other people do for work - there’s a lot to learn from everyone!

And wow Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ is stunning - some sentences of this book I wanted to hold in my mouth and my mind for days, so beautiful and fragrant were they, I took snapshots of pages stored into my iPhone:

“We sang, nearly shouting the lyrics, the wind clipping at our voices. They say a song can be a bridge, Ma. But I say it’s also the ground we stand on. And maybe we sing to keep ourselves from falling. Maybe we sing to keep ourselves.'“

Keep singing,

Justin

A summer of bringing music to ordinary and extraordinary places

Its been a busy few weeks since I returned from Limerick where we were filming and recording the triple spiral piece. I immediately started a tour called 'Barefoot Baroque' with 5 of my friends travelling around the towns and islands of West Cork bringing free concerts to places that don't often hear baroque music - and it was such an overwhelmingly beautiful experience - just people's hunger for this kind of democratic classical/punk musical experience where all are welcome, we put away any pretensions, and connect to each others' shared lives and losses through the music of Bach, Handel, Telemann.... I came away very enriched and inspired and I hope some of you were able to make it out and could experience it all in the moment. I am more and more convinced that musical experiences like this need to be available to ALL people, and shouldn’t become commodified as everything seems to be in this era of late-stage capitalism. There is something in a collective experience like this that binds us together as a community - its more than just aesthetic beauty - there is a commonality and solidarity in the sharing of this music which spans centuries and yet still remains as vital and important for our own lives today with all the challenges we face as a society. I want to strive as a composer and performer to curate more and more spaces like this, which I hope will change the culture of how we view this kind of music and access to it.

Then I played two very different and more practically challenging (!!) gigs with my collaborator brother ADT and the band Los Salamandas, on board the ferry which took us to the Fastnet lighthouse, where we played music on the rolling sea, with the engine thrum in the background, sometimes holding on for dear life as wind and rain hit the windows and sides of the boat....Alan and I have just finished work on the new ADT record, which comes out in September, and he has been on an amazing and equally inspiring tour of lighthouse gigs around Ireland, raising funds for the RNLI. This Fastnet show was for sure the most ambitious and awesome of all, and was organised in collaboration with the Skibbereen Arts Festival. It sold out in a snap so we added another night. But we really had no concept of what it would be like performing on the boat! The first night had a pretty intense swell, but beautiful clear sky and we had a sublime moment as the sun illluminated the rock and Alan and I went to the upper deck and played acoustically out to the crowd in the open air in the middle of the vast ocean.... words can't capture it but needless to say I was thankful for the way music has brought me to some extraordinary places in my life! (And thankful to set foot on solid ground again…)