“I’m having a lot of fun… We have to remember to have fun” says curator, composer and project manager Judith Ring about the upcoming new music event Sensorium. Ring is both anxious and excited about the event, taking place from 7 to 12 March at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre, and it’s easy to see why.

One glance at the programme reveals Sensorium as both extensive and ambitious.  It covers a variety of disciplines within new music and a wide range of events, comprising a full week of programming. The website promises a week in which Sensorium will “showcase and promote music in innovative arrangements including contemporary music, improvisation, electronic music, electro-acoustic music, music and video, music and dance and performance art, along with other co-creative media”.

This is a very broad spectrum and a week of programming is already sounding too short to include everything. The description of the events on the website is definitely the first time I’ve seen the word “explosive” connected to new music!

The whole event will take place in Project Arts Centre, with the major events happening on the Friday and Saturday nights, although there are plenty of choice shorter performances to choose from in the preceding days. The Friday and Saturday night events contain performances of works by Irish composers Enda Bates, Jonathan Nangle, Linda Buckley, Garrett Sholdice and Ring herself.

String Quartet No. 1 by Enda Bates
Listen here to a SoundCloud performed by the Crash Ensemble (Kate Ellis, Cora Venus Lunny, Emily Thyne and Cliodhna Ryan) at Free State V, Beckett Theatre, Dublin, March 6th, 2010.

Two particularly interesting events taking place during the week are workshops given by composers George Higgs and Laura Hyland. Higgs is known for building incredibly inventive instruments and his instrument building workshop promises to be a heap of fun followed by a performance on your new instrument that evening!

The idea stems from a performance presented by The Link Project, which took place in York in 2010. The York event was managed by four students – Ring, Angie Atmadjaja, Emily Kalies and Enrico Bertelli – all of whom are invested in the continuation of the project. The aspiration of Ring and her co-managers is that The Link Project will eventually be extended internationally and there are ideas for events across Europe already in the pipeline. The success of the Dublin event will give them an accurate idea of how this project will manifest internationally.

At just €20 the festival pass is extremely reasonable, although each event is individually priced (and reasonably so) for those of us unable to make the whole week.

Keep an eye on Vulgo for a post-event review from Aisling.

Aisling Ryan is a Cultural Project Manager. She likes writing, teacups, explicit embroidery and a good tune…