"Correspondences" is a unique collaboration between Xenia Pestova Bennett and Joe Hanly. It is a work that is playful, open, experimental, melodic, dissonant and a real reminder of the shared physicality of making, both in music experimentation and performance and in the production of painting, print and video work. As the piece unfolds each of its vibrant elements questioningly leans towards the another, sparking off dialogue - corresponding.
- Brian Fay, artist and writer
Xenia Pestova Bennett's music is deeply focussed: each sonic field feels unique and rich, and Pestova Bennett allows the listener to appreciate its morphological traits in a way that feels at once generous and hypnotic. Similarly, resonances and connections to Joe Hanly's visual art emerge and recede gently, unforced and natural.
- Garrett Sholdice, composer and curator
The best moment, for me, was when pages of Hanly’s graphics appeared as floating scores, dropped around the pianist while she interpreted them on the fly. Slowly gathering on the concrete floor like landing birds, the weaving together of the artist’s visual language and Pestova Bennett’s musical responses filled the austere atrium with a sense of a new life being invented.
- John Graham, printmaker, writer and critic
Pianist, composer and improviser Xenia Pestova Bennett joins forces with acclaimed visual artist Joe Hanly to present a striking interdisciplinary project.
Correspondences combines pre-recorded digital audio with live performance featuring piano and toy piano alongside visual elements. Hanly’s stunning video environments are projected on a series of interconnected monitors, arranged schematically and optionally mounted onto 3D physical objects and large canvas paintings. Pestova Bennett’s live improvisation and performance of pre-composed music interacts with the changing visual environment as she plays with footage of triggered, looped and projected clones of herself, interacting with independently evolving gestural complexity. The two artists combine seemingly disparate elements in novel ways to bring together music and visual art to create unexpected correspondences.
First devised during a chance encounter between Xenia and Joe while on a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in 2022, this project is funded with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Video trailer: