The Nursery- John Nugent
Chordless- Steve Keenan
Fathom- Ian Brabazon
Melt- Joanne Kieran
Los maas u los salas- Riet Bobbaers
Echoes- Ian Brabazon
A View from a Spire- Phil Grier
piece.orc.- Rory Walsh
The Trane Thing- Victor Lazzarini
The autumn concert series at Airfield House, Dundrum, ended last Wednesday with electro-acoustic music composed and presented by staff and postgraduate students from NUI Maynooth. Ian Brabazon, who lectures in music technology at Maynooth, was the concert's genial presenter, whose informality helped to smooth out several disruptions caused by technical problems.
The evening was a creditable example of what can be produced by apprentice composers in a medium where mastering electronic technology is among the least of many challenges. Compositions by John Nugent, Ian Brabazon, Phil Grier, Rory Walsh and Victor Lazzarini all had the added visual element of performer reacting with live electronics.
Lazzarini's experience, as a composer and as the teacher in charge of music technology at Maynooth, was evident in his memorial to John Coltrane, The Trane Thing. It featured some superb saxophone playing from Cyrille Laurens. Ian Brabazon's video and tape composition, Fathom, was tantalising in its mix of visual and sonic metaphors.
In the three works for tape alone, by Steve Keenan, Joanne Kieran and Riet Bobbaers, the printed programme had an important role, either in giving an image through which to translate abstract sound, or in explaining the composer's thinking. However, the most striking student compositions were those which resisted the profligacy offered by music technology. In Joanne Kieran's tape composition, Melt, the recurring themes, and variations around them, made a stronger impression than the metaphorical journey from the Arctic to the Sahara. Above all, there was the focus of Rory Walsh's piece.orc, with cello responding to the subtle manipulations of live electronics. Its non-developmental progress was not always convincing, but it was a striking justification of the maxim that the strongest music is usually that which deals with sound in its own terms.