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…)