Some of you may recall Gerry Diver’s fascinating ‘The Speech Project’ which we mentioned back in March. The good news is that Arts Council England have confirmed a major award for Gerry to take his work on a tour of England in March 2012.
WHAT IS SPEECH PROJECT?
Speech Project is an album of new compositions by Gerry Diver featuring exclusive spoken word contributions from Christy Moore, Paddy Moloney, Martin Hayes and Danny Meehan. Archive interviews from Margaret Barry and Joe Cooley also feature in the compositions.
WHY THE TERM ‘SPEECH PROJECT’?
The music is derived from the melody and rhythm of the spoken words. Naturally, all spoken words has pitch and rhythm inherent within them. Whilst the music borrows from Irish traditional idioms the album is by no means traditional.
Using Irish trad ‘snippets,’ Amercian 20th century forms glued together with some of the best known voices in Ireland the music was graciously described by one of the interviewees as ‘a kind of folk minimalism on the cutting edge of folk crossover’
Tracks
Dates confirmed for this multi-media tour so far include The Sage Gateshead, The Met in Bury and The Purcell Room in London, with a premiere at Liverpool Irish Festival on 20th October 2011.