Artistic Work

About
This is the child’s secret treasure chest. A box of wonder. Fragile. Precious. This suite of 12 Preludes for 12 Pianists for solo piano is an intensely personal set of pieces inspired by and dedicated to childhood. The ideas that were used for each of these pieces had been kept safe for a very long time. I only let them see the light of day in 2024 and 2025 when I composed this heartfelt set of preludes. Composed for the following 12 Pianists, half from Ireland and half other countries: Nathalia Milstein (FRANCE), Finghin Collins (IRELAND), Hugh Tinney (IRELAND), Izumi Kimura (IRELAND / JAPAN), Eliza McCarthy (USA / UK), Cormac McCarthy (IRELAND), Ryan Molloy (IRELAND), Isabelle O’Connell (IRELAND / USA), Máire Carroll (IRELAND), Fiachra Garvey (IRELAND), James McVinnie (UK) & Vicky Chow (USA). Throughout the collection we explore wonder, innocence, freedom, serenity, love, discovery, beauty, delight, perfection, the feeling of genuine aliveness, ecstasy, and the end of innocence.

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About
"Visualization" is a work in which the musicians elegantly throw/scatter invisible music to each other, over the listeners, and also over anyone in the vicinity. These invisible tones wash over the audience, bathing them in sound. This ritual-like work was composed for Luminosa Orchestra for the resonant space of Galway Cathedral. It is intended that the piece be performed in a very resonant space, in order for the musicians to be able to share their sounds fully, and physically, with the audience. It is hoped that the work can be performed as a sort of ritualistic return to live performance, after 2020. The piece is in part inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros, Robert Fripp, Juraj Kojs, Diane Daly & Andrei Tarkovsky.

Dejana Sekulić Interpretation - Music Biennale Zagreb
I first got acquainted with Perkin's piece in late 2022 through Sergio Roberto Gratteri, and for the occasion of a duo performance with Victor Guaita. I created a first re-interpretation of Perkin's work, for two performers, with violin and viola and two-channel video, for the occasion of that 2023 January performance at DAS HAUS in Brussels. In January 2024, I was invited to propose a performance for Music Biennale Zagreb's MBZ33 Launch. Over the period of two months, I filmed and recorded 25 interpretations of the piece. The recordings were intentionally made in moments of quite different states of being: of rest, of fatigue, of calm, of restlessness, of joy, of sadness... spread over time with days of non-recording, or recorded in consecutive days, or making a few recordings in a day. Each of these elements played a role in creating time capsules, which would then be superposed to create an expanded time-space that would then be placed in yet another, "real-time" reality, once set and performed live in the performance space, and with audience present. The search of connection and reconnection, the act of experiential moment of sound is taking place between that introvert aspect of the artists and their extrovert self, and in front and with the audience. This piece is not romanticising any aspect of the act of performance, it dwells on superposed realities of always present elements of grace and that which is unpolished, yet testifies to humanity.

About
This setting of striking texts from ‘The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible’ by Charles Eisenstein is a culmination of two years of work. My intention was to create a numinous score, structured with both risk and integrity, aiming to distill the essence of this remarkable book. In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power. By fully embracing and practicing this principle of interconnectedness—interbeing—we become more effective agents of change and have a stronger positive influence on the world. Above all, Eisenstein invites us to embrace a different understanding of cause and effect, sounding a clarion call to surrender our old worldview of separation, so that we can create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

About
In its artistic intention, "Washing Away The Sorrow" seeks to create a place for the listener to be cleansed of what needs to be cleansed. Will Duerden emerges, each time anew, from the purifying washes of sound which gently cascade over us from afar, confirming the unsurpassed beauty and power of music.

About The Work
“The Copy and The Original” is a work which explores the different colours of the Baroque Violin and the Modern Violin. In the piece we hear the two instruments blend together in a number of different ways, at times blurring the line between the colours of the two instruments and their different tunings. Continuously-emerging patterns, which echo between the two performers, flow out of the two violins. Dalcroze-inspired physical movements allow us to visually be aware of what is happening in the music. Dedicated to Dalcroze specialist Diane Daly, and Claire Duff. Note: Baroque Violin (415 Hz) and Modern Violin (440 Hz). Since its première, tre work was also performed at Muzik Biennale Zagreb 2025. Having been asked by numerous musicians to do different versions of the work, there is now a version of the piece for Violin & Cello, and also a version for Viola & Cello.

About
The delicately resonant world of the work conveys the humbling feeling of finding the long-forgotten music box of childhood. Dedicated warmly to the memory of George Dunne, my first music teacher, an authentic elder with an unbroken inner-child. Jointly commissioned by the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and the Cork County Council Arts Office to mark the 25th anniversary of the purchase of the Cork County Council Harpsichord. Cork County Council and West Cork Music acknowledge the support of the Arts Council of Ireland. Composed especially for Dohyo Sol & Marcus Mohlin from Camerata Øresund, Denmark.

PROGRAMME NOTE BY MICHAEL PARLOFF
(Artistic Director: Parlance Chamber Concerts, NJ, USA)
Sam Perkin’s 2016 piano trio was commissioned by the Gwyl Gregynog Festival for Fidelio Trio, the oldest classical music festival in Wales. “Freakshow” was composed in honor of the centenary of the Easter Rising, the 1916 armed Irish insurrection against British rule. The rebellion was soon quashed, sixteen rebels were executed, and 1800 prisoners were transported to the Welsh internment camp at Fron-Goch where they were detained from June to December, 1916. Perkin’s “Freakshow” was inspired by stories of the dismal conditions in the prison camp. According to one account, the entire camp was so overrun with rats that one prisoner went to great lengths to catch and feature them in a "Rat Circus” that he presented for the entertainment of his fellow inmates. The macabre tone of this story prompted Sam Perkin to write a set of musically diverse miniatures that draw on themes of captivity and spectacle as points of departure. “Freakshow” is a set of imaginative musical portraits of historical figures whose physical deformities were exhibited as carnival and circus sideshow spectacles during mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Each movement represents a different performer:

1. THE RAT CIRCUS
The Rat Circus provides a brief sonic image of the viciously squeaking and skittering rats in the prisoner’s circus at Fron-Goch Internment Camp.

2. THE TWO-HEADED NIGHTINGALE
The Two-Headed Nightingale is a delicately grotesque waltz evoking a stage performance by the conjoined African American twins, Millie and Christine McCoy, who traveled the world during the mid-19th century as popular song and dance entertainers. Over the course of their lives, they overcame years of slavery, forced medical observation, and degrading participation in fairs and freak shows.

3. THE LIVING SKELETON
The Living Skeleton is a feather-weight musical depiction of Issac W. Sprague whom PT Barnum showcased in the 1860s as “The Original Thin Man” At age 44, Sprague was 5 feet and 6 inches tall but weighed only 43 pounds.

4. THE GENTLE GIANT
The Gentle Giant is a gently ironic, pizzicato portrait of the massive Robert Wadlow, who grew to be the tallest person in recorded history. At the time of his death in 1940, Wadlow had grown to the height of 8 feet, 11.1 inches.

5. THE ANGEL OF DEATH
The Angel of Death is a hauntingly chorale-like sketch of the malicious Josef Mengele, the fearsome Nazi doctor who performed genetic experiments on captives at Auschwitz. Among his subjects were the seven members of the Ovitz Family, an imprisoned family of Jewish Hungarian dwarves who made their living as entertainers. Menegle kept them alive as subjects for his pseudoscientific experiments on heredity.

6. PANDORA'S BASKET
Pandora’s Basket was inspired by a famous early 20th-century contortionist named Li Yeng. The armless and legless Chinese performer became known as the “Basket Lady of Weijing Province”, since she was small enough to sit in a basket only several inches deep.  With its evocative hints of chinoiserie, the movement is the most emotionally far-ranging in the set, vacillating between diaphanous, filigreed textures and more forceful displays of Ravel-like virtuosity.

7. THE ARMLESS FIDDLER
The upbeat final movement, The Armless Fiddler, is a toe-tapping celebration of Carl Herman Unthan, an armless, Prussian-born violinist and actor who learned to play the violin with his feet by strapping the instrument to a stool. He became such an accomplished performer that he appeared as a soloist with many European orchestras and lectured to injured German World War I veterans about how to retrain their legs and feet to take over for their missing upper limbs. In the Armless Fiddler, Sam Perkin creates a jauntily pizzicato Irish jig to summon Unthan’s indomitable spirit.

About
When I was composing a work entitled Pause for the Ortús Chamber Music Festival in 2016, almost 10 years ago, I had done a number of experiments with Irish folksong from a contemporary perspective. My aim was to authentically offer an original point of view from which to view these masterful songs, or at least to show how I would dream of arranging them. For Pause in 2016, I decided on arranging The Foggy Dew, though I had carried out a number of irresistible compositional experiments with She Moved Through The Fair. In 2024, I finally had to revisit these sketches, as they were just asking to be written and I would not have forgiven myself for not allowing the structure to flower into the piece that it is, My Young Love Was Gone (2024). The compositional idea was like a magnet pulling me towards it. My ear guided me towards arranging this timeless melody in such a way as to express the heart of the text while not getting in the way, only saying just enough throughout (a delicate tight-rope walk with the String Quartet), allowing the soul of this overwhelmingly beautiful song to breathe a new breath.

About
"Visualization" is a work in which the musicians elegantly throw/scatter invisible music to each other, over the listeners, and also over anyone in the vicinity. These invisible tones wash over the audience, bathing them in sound. This ritual-like work was composed for Luminosa Orchestra for the resonant space of Galway Cathedral. It is intended that the piece be performed in a very resonant space, in order for the musicians to be able to share their sounds fully, and physically, with the audience. It is hoped that the work can be performed as a sort of ritualistic return to live performance, after 2020. The piece is in part inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros, Robert Fripp, Juraj Kojs, Diane Daly & Andrei Tarkovsky.

About
"Visualization" is a work in which the musicians elegantly throw/scatter invisible music to each other, over the listeners, and also over anyone in the vicinity. These invisible tones wash over the audience, bathing them in sound. This ritual-like work was composed for Luminosa Orchestra for the resonant space of Galway Cathedral. It is intended that the piece be performed in a very resonant space, in order for the musicians to be able to share their sounds fully, and physically, with the audience. It is hoped that the work can be performed as a sort of ritualistic return to live performance, after 2020. The piece is in part inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros, Robert Fripp, Juraj Kojs, Diane Daly & Andrei Tarkovsky.

About
Luail opened the Dublin Dance Festival’s 21st Edition at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre with its first major production, Chora, performed by the company’s ensemble alongside the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of ‘chora’ — a space that is both physical and abstract — this triple bill presents a dynamic exchange between dancers and musicians, drawing on themes of memory and landscape. Each work creates its own distinct and evocative atmosphere within the shared terrain of Chora: Invocation by Mufutau Yusuf is set to the composition Dig Deep by Julia Wolfe; Constellations by Liz Roche is performed alongside Nimbus by Sam Perkin; and I Contain Multitudes by choreographers Guy Nader and Maria Campos features Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt, rearranged for the Irish Chamber Orchestra by Marijn van Prooijen with kind permission from the Simeon ten Holt Foundation.

About
As a sound meditation, this piece aims to create a trance-like experience, both for the performer and for the listener: To set up that space which we often call ‘the zone’, where magic is born in the air. Commissioned especially for the Spotlight Chamber Music Series by cellist and curator Aoife Burke. First performed at The Triskel Arts Centre Cork, performed by Siobhán Doyle, David Kenny & Aoife Burke. Filmed by Chris Cullen and recorded by Chris Somers. Subsequently released by Louth Contemporary Music Society, performed by Mia Coopoer, Joachim Roewer & William Butt.

About
After reading the following quote by writer Charles Eisenstein, I instantly realised that what the quote describes has always been my approach to writing music. The quote contains a paradox, though paradoxes do themselves form part of reality. With this in heart and mind, I set out to write a piece for Nathan which expresses the intention of the quote, while engaging in the wonderful sound-colours he creates so beautifully.

"If I write something that is really beautiful, that is more beautiful than it has to be, it probably actually serves what it has to be even better than I understand".

About
Following recent scientific study, we are now almost certain that the Northern Lights do indeed make sounds that are audible to humans. This was a much debated subject until the last decade. Before, the sounds were simply written off as myth or folklore. Unto K. Laine, who lead a Finnish study to capture these sounds, used an array of microphones and sophisticated audio equipment to pinpoint these unusual sounds, which appear to be generated in the air about 230 feet above the ground. Laine’s findings show that these mysterious sounds are not illusions, auditory hallucinations, or other acoustical phenomena emerging from frost or trees. According to Laine: “The recorded unamplified sounds can be similar to crackles or muffled bangs, which last for only a short period of time. These sounds are so soft that one has to listen very carefully to hear them and to distinguish them from the ambient noise.” In this atmospheric, yearning piece, we follow Laine’s journey to capture the elusive sounds of the Northern Lights.

About
”Pause” is a meditative work that was written especially for The Ortús Chamber Music Festival 2016 and is dedicated to Thomas Kent.  It is scored for String Quartet, Audio (Slowed-Down Irish Fiddle), Voice & Audience. The audio part is created entirely from a recording of violinist Mairéad Hickey performing “The Foggy Dew” on the fiddle.  This traditional Irish song was written after the events of The 1916 Rising.  I asked Mairéad to record this song on the fiddle in order to slow down the recording, and to slow it down a great deal - by around 800%.  When this is done, a sound with staggering beauty emerges in the air, it has a depth that is hard to put into words.  In the work we hear this slowed-down fiddle blend with the live String Quartet.  The role of the quartet changes from synchronisation, to interaction, to fully liberated, throughout the piece.  The result is one which lets the listener slow down - to pause for a moment - to reflect.  Different people reflect on different things.  One person might think about the events of The 1916 Rising, another might think about how far we have come in the 100 years since, and yet another might notice how similar the sounds of the traditional Irish fiddle are to those of trains in the distance.  This is the ever-remarkable magic of music.  Funded by Cork County Council as part of the Ireland 2016 Initiative.

About
The Ros Tapestry Suite is a remarkable collection of 15 compositions for solo piano by 15 Irish composers. Each tapestry in the collection has a sonic counterpart, displaying an extraordinary collaboration between the arts. 

“Nesting Doll” is inspired by Tapestry No. 8 - The Marriage of William Marshal and Isabel de Clare. After a long time with this particular tapestry, one starts to notice the deeper themes hidden within. These themes go far past what is first noticed to a crystal clear area of realization. A puzzle unlocked. For me, the most striking aspect of the tapestry is the manner in which it perfectly conveys the themes of lineage, ancestry, expectation, time and change. The Russian Matryoshka Doll, descendant of the Japanese Fukurama Doll, kept appearing in my mind whenever I looked at the tapestry. “Nesting Doll” is the modern English term currently in use. This seemingly simple toy contains a secret that is present in the tapestry and the piece both structurally and thematically, and indeed philosophically. Upon opening a nesting doll, one unearths the deep truth hidden within. 

The Ros Tapestry Suite is the most ambitious project undertaken by the New Ross Piano Festival since its inception in 2006. It represents a variegated musical response to the Ros Tapestry, an impressive fifteen-panel work of embroidery tracing the history of the Norman invasion of Ireland. The double-album edition documents fifteen works for solo piano, each commissioned from a different Irish composer by the New Ross Piano Festival, and each involved with a distinct and personal engagement with one of the tapestry panels. The fifteen pieces were premiered by an array of Irish and international pianists, five at a time, at the three piano festivals in September 2014, 2015 and 2016. For each performance, the tapestry in question was carried up to the church from the exhibition space and displayed beside the piano. The compositions are as rich and varied as the tapestry is colourful and engrossing.