24 May 2021
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
Arts & Entertainment News
As part of the Cork Harbour Festival “A Conversation with Beethoven and Shakespeare” Created by Regina Crowley and Gabriela Mayer, and featuring Eanna Hardwicke. On the Roof of Blackrock Observatory. 4th, 5th and 6th June 2021 at 2pm, 6pm, 7.30pm, 9pm. (with no 2p.m. show on Friday 4th) Admission 10 euro. Audience limited to 15 per performance.
Gabriela Mayer and Regina Crowley from MTU Cork School of Music launching their new show A Conversation with Beethoven and Shakespeare in Blackrock Castle Observatory.
Picture Darragh Kane
Regina Crowley and Gabriela Mayer from MTU Cork School of Music launching their new show A Conversation with Beethoven and Shakespeare in Blackrock Castle Observatory.
Picture Darragh Kane
This sound installation explores a creative dialogue between fragments of piano music and dramatic text, inviting the audience into a ‘listening oasis’ on the open terrace of the Blackrock Castle. The possibility to experience space and sound in a different way is explored.
Some notes: a sequence of piano sounds first played in Vienna over 200 years ago. Other notes: observations spoken on stage in London 400 years ago. Over time these notes continue to reverberate. They speak of fundamental human experience as relevant to us now as to the audiences who first heard them.
Individually, Gabriela and Regina have explored and performed these notes by Beethoven and Shakespeare for as long as they can remember. More recently, they have collaborated in finding new resonances between music and words, and added their own voices to the conversation.
You may be familiar with some of the melodies. You will likely have heard some of the words. Once the playing has finished and the voices are silent, the notes will continue.
As part of this very special event, the Blackrock Castle Observatory will encode and beam this show to a distant pair of stars – Bran and Tuiren. It will take 12 years for these sounds to arrive at their destination. Whatever changes 12 years bring us, these notes (sent to us from another time) will continue to play – accompanying our onward explorations.
See website http://corkharbourfestival.com/2021/notes-to-a-star/