Commissioned by Yonit Kosovske

Funded by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and PRS Foundation Beyond Borders

Instrumentation:

Treble viol, toy piano, harpsichord and electronics. Score available from the Contemporary Music Centre, electronic tracks available from the composer.

I. Tales (Invocation)

II. Interlude 1

III. Wheels (Wild, Stifled)

IV. Interlude 2

V. Ghosts (Lamentoso)

VI. Islands (Coda)

Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it’s not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit… – Hugo Hamilton, “The Speckled People”

Where is home? For millions of displaced people, this simple question is becoming increasingly difficult to answer. Home can be a place of nurture, safety, and ancestral roots, or a place of oppression, lack of opportunity, and loss. Homes can be lost but also found, regained, rediscovered, and made anew. Our sense of home could be intricately linked with nostalgic memories from childhood, while for musicians, home might be the territory and tactile association with their instrument.

BAILE (“home” in Irish) brings together personal histories of migration, memory and (be)longing in search of home. Baroque instruments are joined by a tiny toy piano on stage and enveloped with field recordings and spoken word to create an intricate and private dream world of sounds both old and new, humorous and serious, reflective and progressive.

The composer wishes to thank Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Yonit Kosovske, Yosuke Kurihara, Jochen Neurath, Brian Robinson and all the spoken word participants.

The fixed media soundtrack features voices by Xenia Pestova Bennett, Patrick Goyvaerts, Sarah Groser, Hugo Hamilton, Yonit Kosovske and Mairead O’hEocha.

Featured image by Charlie McGeever.