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…)
