Weekly Playlist: Ann Cleare

by Ted Gordon on May 22, 2020, 2:01 p.m.

This week we're turning our ears to the music of Ann Cleare, a composer whose work explores new possibilities in instrumental, natural, musical, and experimental sound. Cleare works in concert music, opera, extended sonic environments, and hybrid instrumental design, often collaborating with performers to develop new modifications and techniques that probe the boundaries of musical performance. 

1. I should live in wires for leaving you behind, Cleare's 2014 work for piano (two players) and percussion, evokes what the composer calls a "ball of wire": a "mammoth, tangled, metallic motion that spins relentlessly":

2. Dorchadas, Cleare's 2007 work for ensemble which takes its title from the Irish word for "darkness", here performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble:

3. Moil, Cleare's 2010 string quartet, which the composer describes in her program note as "of brittleness, of memory, of shards, of light, of changing, of seismology":

4. i am not a clockmaker either, Cleare's 2009 work for accordion and electronics, which "sets into motion a physical force which dissects the instrument into acute shards or material and reconstitutes it in a completely restructured manner."

TAK Ensemble Releases "Oor," Featuring Erin Gee & Ann Cleare

by Ted Gordon on May 16, 2019, 4:29 p.m.

Over the past six years, New York's TAK Ensemble has emerged as a unique ensemble in contemporary music: the quintet has already released two albums, collaborating with composers Taylor Brook and Mario Diaz de Leon, which show the ensemble's dedication to working directly with composers and artists to create new work. Now TAK has launched their own record label, TAK Editions, and will release their third album—Oor—featuring works by PSNY composers Erin Gee and Ann Cleare, in addition to works by Tyshawn Sorey, Ashkan Behdazi, David Bird, and Natacha Diels. 

Erin Gee's Mouthpiece 28, included on the album, was premiered by TAK in 2016, and here sees a pristine studio recording that captures every minute sound of vocalist Charlotte Mundy's voice, turned into a non-semantic instrument complimeted by bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, and percussion. Oor also features a recording of Ann Cleare's unable to create an offscreen world (c), which explores "ideas of wrongness, incompatibility, and inability with ferocious streams of energy, confidence and hope."

TAK writes: 

The album is called Oor (roughly translating to naked) because these works, to us, share a sense of raw openness, unvarnished emotion, and urgency. This visceral collection of pieces, primarily written for the ensemble, highlights fierce virtuosity, uncanny blends, and otherworldly timbral landscapes.

Preview the album at I Care If You Listen or TAK's Bandcamp page, and if you're in New York, be sure to check out their album release event on May 18th.

Ann Cleare Wins Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composers' Prize

by Ted Gordon on March 8, 2019, 1:43 p.m.

Ann Cleare has won a 2019 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composers' Prize—one of the most prestigious and significant awards in music, and the first Siemens Foundation prize to be awarded to an Irish composer. On June 7th, Cleare will recieve the award, alongside fellow awardees Annesley Black and Mithatcan Öcal, at a ceremony that will also include screenings of short films about all three composers, as well as a performance of Cleare's chamber ensemble work, on magnetic fields. The award also includes a portrait album on the Viennese label KAIROS, to be released later in 2019.

The musicologist Gascia Ouzounian has written an essay on Cleare's works, including her ensemble work on magnetic fields (2011-2012), her string quartet Moil (2010), and I Am Not a Clockmaker Either (2009), for accordion and electronics. Ouzounian asks:

is it music at all? Or is it something else, an altogether different artform that draws from musical traditions, but pushes against and beyond them, articulating something that is at once about sound, but that is equally concerned with energy, motion, space – and the world itself?