ERGODOS FESTIVAL

National Concert Hall, Unitarian Church, St Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road, Dublin Today-Apr 25th

The new Ergodos Festival is the brainchild of the duo who were behind the Printing House Festival of New Music. And, as with the old festival, Ergodos, run by composers Garrett Sholdice and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, is finding some cracks to fill in.

Their own apologia runs, “The composer Lou Harrison used to say ‘don’t put down the hybrids, because there isn’t anything else’. Things are infinitely complex, and there are many influences acting upon what we do. Yet in our haste to define, we are forced to generalise.

“The culture of genre is an illusion, surely. A product of marketing and the needs of commerce, its taxonomy is harmfully imprecise.

“We celebrate music that doesn’t fit the grid, that falls between the cracks, that evades definition. We present a confluence of musical languages.”

In practical terms, that means you’ll find Western composers making out with the percussive sounds of an Indonesian gamelan, a programme of electronic and improvised music, another based around the electric guitar, and even stranger things.

The culmination is a sonic immersion in the piece In a large, open space, by the late James Tenney at St Bartholomew's on Saturday, April 25th. Full details at www.ergodos.ie.

MICHAEL DERVAN