NOCTURNE

Co-Presented with Line Upon Line Percussion

For millennia, the stars have guided how people live and have helped form some of our earliest and most important mythologies. In the sky, we have found gods, the measurement of time, chemical secrets, and divine warnings, yet the more of its secrets we decode, the more mysteries we discover and the deeper we are drawn in…

Part music, part theatre, part collective exploration, NOCTURNE is a dynamic musical performance that will unfold across the indoor and outdoor spaces of Laguna Gloria. From ancient maps and optical instruments to modern spectroscopy, the audience will sonically and visually experience how people have seen the sky throughout history, exploring what has both guided and puzzled philosophical and scientific imaginations across time.

Expect transmissions from space, experiments with light, outdoor walking, and instrument building, all directed by the musicians of Line Upon Line percussion trio.

Doors open at 6p, get there early to ensure parking, grab a complimentary drink and make your way to your assigned performance space. Performance is from 7–8:30P.

This immersive performance is created by composer Ann Cleare, in collaboration with theatre-maker Shanna May Breen and multimedia artist Maura McDonnell.

This project was commissioned by the Ernst von Siemens Foundation with support from the Arts Council of Ireland and Culture Ireland.

For accommodations, please email [email protected] in advance.

 
Museum Members, sign in with your Member ID to access Member pricing when reserving tickets online or present your ID when purchasing tickets at the event to access discounted pricing.

About Ann Cleare

Ann Cleare is a composer and technologist, creating through the medium of sound. This practice extends to the areas of concert music, opera, sonic environments (site-specific, installation works), and hybrid instrumental design (involving both hardware design and software engineering). She is particularly fascinated by timbre and texture and how these parameters can be activated with the use of technology to explore places, people, and ideas through sound. In all her work, the goal lies in expressing the sound of now, including how this relates to past and future worlds, exploring the sonic texture of what it means to be alive in the 21st century.

An internationally celebrated composer, Ann’s work has been has been presented by major broadcasters such as the BBC, NPR, ORF, SWR, WDR, and has been presented on some of the world’s most renowned stages, such as The Berlin Philharmonie, Walt Disney Hall in L.A, Lincoln Centre in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, and HARPA in Reykjavík. Ann is an Assistant Professor of Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin and her scores are published by Project Schott New York. Further information can be found on her website: https://annclearecomposer.com

About Shanna May Breen

Inspired by climate conversations, performance marker Shanna May Breen creates multi-platform artworks to carbonate change. 

Previous works have seen her plant a micro native forest in her hometown to devise a performance about trees - Root, Dublin Theatre Festival 2021, compose a “plastic pilgrimage” on board a coastal train - Mould Into Shape, Dublin Fringe Festival 2019 and build a miniature mega city live on stage with her mum - Superstructure, The Peacock 2019. In 2018 Shanna was awarded the Dublin Fringe Festival Next Stage Wild Card Award for The Sound of Phoenix, a travelling soundscape of Phoenix Park on board a 1920s bus. 

Most recently, Shanna curated and produced GULL, a site-specific city project dedicated to the Dublin (sea)gulls - a co-commission by the Abbey Theatre and Dublin Fringe Festival 2022. The project featured the work of five multidisciplinary artists, a Currach rower and an Ornithologist. GULL was developed alongside the Pan Pan International Mentorship Programme 2022. 

About Maura McDonnell

Maura McDonnell is an Irish artist and Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin. Maura's art practice is in the visual arts and experimental film/media art fields. Her main artistic output focuses on creating abstract experimental abstract animation film, she calls this art, a visual music art. Maura's visual music works have been screened, presented at music concerts, animation festivals, film screenings, academic symposia and in art installations all over the world, such as Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Singapore, UK, US. Her visual music works have won several awards and honorary mentions, including a visual music award in 2011 in the visual music award event in Frankfurt, Germany. Recently, she has been invited to present retrospectives of her abstract animation work in master classes for the International Monstra Animation Festival, in Lisbon (2024) and the Punto y Raya Festival Academy, in Barcelona (2024).

About Line Upon Line Percussion

Formed in 2009 at The University of Texas at Austin, line upon line exists to champion living composers and pursue the musically unfamiliar. 

The Austin-based trio has premiered well over 100 new works for percussion and has worked with composers in residencies at Harvard University, Stanford University, Cal Poly, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, Kunstuniversität Graz, University of Huddersfield, University of Liverpool, City University of London and Monash University (Melbourne).

Internationally, the group has performed at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Open Circuit Festival (Liverpool), Novalis Festival (Osijek), in Basel (Hochschule für Musik), Berlin (Unerhörte Musik), Cologne (Loft Köln), Freiburg (Hochschule für Musik), Graz (Open Music), Koper (Koper Biennale) and London (City, University of London), and has taught at the Conservatoriums in Melbourne and Sydney, London (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Manchester (Royal Northern College of Music) and Tours (Le pôle Aliénor).

Nationally, line upon line has performed and taught in twenty-five different states, at two Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento) and The Myrna Loy Center (Helena, MT). 

In Texas, the group has performed at two Fusebox Festivals, the Menil Collection (Houston), Victoria Bach Festival and the International Festival-Institute at Round Top.

line upon line consists of Cullen Faulk, Matthew Teodori and Jordan Walsh.