Frank Corcoran

irish composer

YES, THIS WAS IN 2017

Rhapsodic Celli: The Music of Frank Corcoran

CD Release June 2017 – Available for Review Now

DOWNLOAD FULL ALBUM MP3s AND BOOKLET HERE http://bit.ly/2r8MZHj

Rhapsodic Celli will be launched at The Hugh Lane Gallery Sundays@Noon concert, Parnell Square North, Dublin 1 on 4th June.

Soloist Martin Johnson explores Frank Corcoran’s writing for cello in all its nuances, from the swagger of a concerto and the rhapsodic polyphony of his work for eight cellos through to the composer’s arrangements of folk tunes for cello and piano informed by the rhythms of the Irish language.

Frank Corcoran has lived and taught in Germany for most of his professional life but has retained a profound connection with the literature and traditional music of his native country. The CD features his Cello Concerto, a rhapsody for cello octet and eight miniatures based on traditional tunes for cello and piano.

DUBLIN FESTIVAL FRANK CORCORAN PREMIERE

NEW MUSIC DUBLIN. NATIONAL CONCERT HALL 3. March 2019.

Certainly YOIKS !

And more YIKES !

The RTE CON TEMPO STRING QUARTET was red-hot with my new

STRING QUARTET – FRANK CORCORAN AT 75 !

Searing, soaring, their strings cut and weaved and sawed and screamed through my Movement One, ”

in the native Doric , ” IRASCIBILE MA NOBILE “, angry AND noble .

My Slow Movement achieved the high illusion of playful relax which only a world-class

ensemble can get.

And the electric clashes and gashes of the barbarian Last Movement left the packed audience breathless….

FRANK CORCORAN AT 75 THIS MAGIC 2019

FOR MY 75.th BIRTHDAY 2019

A. TWO IMPORTANT INTERVIEWS HERE:

1.) http://www.crosscurrents.ie/frank-corcoran
2.) https://soundcloud.com/cmcireland/cross-currents-episode-1

B. THREE IMPORTANT FRANK CORCORAN CONCERTS NOW :

1.) March 3. Premiere of new String Quartet ( Con Tempo Quartet at the Dublin Festival Of New Music )

2.) March 17. Premiere of new QUASI UN CLARINET CONCERTO ( New York. North South, Conductor Max Lifchitz,
Clarinet Sammy Lesnick

3.) April 10. Frank Corcoran Evening at the Smock Alley Theatre Dublin ( Currents Festival , incl.
SWEENEY’S VISION ( 1998 Bourges Festival Premier Prix ) , QUASI UNA MISSA ( 1999 Swedish
E.M.S. Prize ) and TRADURRE TRADIRE ( 2000 Deutschlandfunk commission ) .

SEAMUS HEANEY ( Poet ) AND FRANK CORCORAN ( Composer )

Strand Road Dublin . 10. 3. 2005 Seamus Heaney to Frank Corcoran after Dublin Premiere of Corcoran’s

MAD SWEENEY / SUIBHNE GEALT for Speaker and Chamber Orchestra.

Frank,

That was a lift and a lift-off- the Boeing reached cruising-level, but there was APOGEE to it also.

It – the programme – built and was built ! Your ” QUASI UN CANTO” for Full Orchestra reminded me of Auden:

” By all means sing of love , but if you do, do make sure you make a rare old hullaballoo… ”

– Heighho and high doh !

Bearers aloft !

SEAMUS

DUBLIN MUSIC CURRENT FESTIVAL 2019 FRANK CORCORAN

April 10. 2019

SMOCK ALLEY THEATRE DUBLIN. 19.00 ( Frank Corcoran, composer, speaks at 18.00 )

Programme:

Frank Corcoran, Quasi una Missa (19’40”) 1999
Frank Corcoran, Tradurre Tradire (24’13”) 2004
Frank Corcoran, Sweeney’s Vision (20’39”) 1997

Three of Frank Corcoran’s ‘tape’ music masterworks are presented here for the first time in surround sound and as a complete body of work in a single concert.
Each of these works reveals Corcoran’s far-reaching vision of a distant, multi-layered, mythic past which is rendered so deftly here in late 20th century technology.

Written in the years spanning the peak of Corcoran’s creative output, these pieces are in a consciously radiophonic

style and, when heard together in a seamless concert performance, they accumulate a coherence and forcefulness of
argument and bring to life Corcoran’s mythological landscape, littered with visual metaphors, in a true ‘cinema for the ear’.

“Corcoran’s musical Mass is a furious symbiosis of polyphonic liturgical sound, an acoustic journey through the musical eras of the West.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

“An archaic world forms itself into a magical epic through rugged contrasts of trickling soundscapes …” (SCALA)

A public pre-concert talk will take place with Frank Corcoran at the Contemporary Music Centre Library, 19 Fishamble Street (just 100m from Smock Alley Theatre) at 6pm. This public event is free to attend and all are welcome. We encourage people to indicate their attendance by emailing rsvp@cmc.ie.

www.frankcorcoran.com

NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2019 – WE ARE THRILLED – RTE CONTEMPO QUARTET

RTÉ Contempo Quartet NATIONAL CONCERT HALL

3. March 2019

Frank Corcoran String Quartet No. 4 – for my 75th Birthday

( 2018, world premiere)

Jane O’Leary the passing sound of forever (2016)

Ian Wilson Quartet No. 12 “Her Charms Invited” (2010)

Greg Caffrey Borne back ceaselessly into the Past (2018)

We are thrilled these masterful, engaging performers are returning to New Music Dublin with another wonderful

programme of premieres, surprises, twists and turns by some of Ireland’s foremost composers.

Presented by New Music Dublin 2019

A SELF REFERENTIALITY – END OF FEBRUARY 2019 ( POST CHRISTMAS )

Dear Próinsias,

Marvellous how we´re back to the ” thin twine of red blood ” ( Seamus Cashman ), the Christmas goose as a

Girardian sacrificial victim in the new snow which has fallen this
unholy night of good sleep in spite of the world´s ( – Ouch ! ) suffering.
I have no Jewish answer. What was Abrahamic Abram up to ? How´ll I peer through the thick snow ?
A full year it is since last we typed such jolly thoughts, the season´s greetings to all, but also to sundry.
I wish myself well as well ? Pursue peace like a snow-hare ?
How ? Healing
air, healing sleep, grub, breathing ; composing, conscious harp-playing, ” níl neart go cur le chéile ” is surely untouchable in its re-assuring Old Irish spondees.
Yet I ache for
its content and then to kick its anti-maverick bias down the slippery 67 steps.

ANONYMOUS NATURE IRISH LYRICS ca. 1200 A.D.

Do badussa uair Once I had indeed
Fa folta buide chas Fine blonde hair
Is nach fuil trem chenn Now all my head has
Acht finnfad gerr glas Is short gray hair.

Robad luimne lem i would by far have
Folt ar dath an fiaich Have the raven’s colour
Do thoidecht trem chenn On my poor head
Na finnfad gerr liath Instead of short gray stubble

Suirge ni dluig dain Flirts I cannot abide
Oir ni mellaim mna Since I don’t attract women
M’fholt im nocht is liath Mi mane is gray tonight
Ni bia mar do ba I shall not be as I once was….

NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2019

SELECTED FESTIVAL New Music Dublin events MARCH 2019

Morning Rituals – a programme of off-site shorts curated and produced by Ergodos

3 March, 10:30 / 11:30

Pianist Hugh Tinney performs Raymond Deane’s Noctuary, a cycle of 12 pieces commissioned by Tinney and first performed in 2013.

3 March, 13:00

RTÉ Contempo Quartet PREMIERE A NEW STRING QUARTET FOR HIS 75.th by Frank Corcoran alongside works by Jane

O’Leary, Ian Wilson, and Greg Caffrey.

3 March, 16:00 NATIONAL CONCERT HALL DUBLIN