“I think as young composers trying to do your best, you often feel like you’ve got to be taken really seriously, and you’ve got to make serious work. But, actually, finding fun and humour and being able to infuse my personality into the work has opened up a lot of doors for me in my own music.”
Áine Mallon
Áine Mallon is an award-winning Irish composer whose music engages with the fundamental human experience of storytelling. Frequently commissioned by ensembles and institutions within both Irish folk and contemporary classical genres, her music has been described as “traditional, yet fresh and new” (John Rutter CBE). Áine is currently Associate Composer with the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland; she has worked with world-class ensembles and soloists including the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Choir Ireland, and ORA Singers, and was a National Youth Choir Emerging Professional Artist 2024. Her music has been performed in festivals throughout the UK, Ireland and Europe, has been recorded by NMC Recordings and has been published by Stainer & Bell. Áine’s most recent works have been narratively focused; her sold out “choose-your-own-adventure operetta” Carbon Women was commissioned by The Nerve Centre and Dumbworld. Her recently commissioned song cycle, Songs from Revered Scorned Women, gives new life to women found in both myth and religion.
Áine is currently looking forward to two premieres: Songs from Revered Scorned Women in Belfast on 14th November, and her latest commission for Chamber Choir Ireland, The Sound of the Sea, premiering across Ireland from 27-29 November. Ahead of the premieres, Jess McNulty caught up with Áine to discuss the importance of artistic process, character-driven storytelling, and choosing your own adventure…
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Jess/PRXLUDES: Shall we start with your new piece ‘The Sound of the Sea’ commissioned by Chamber Choir Ireland. Can you tell me a little bit more about it?
Áine Mallon: This piece is for Chamber Choir Ireland’s November tour. They’re doing a tour based on the sea performing in port towns in Ireland — Belfast, Dún Laoghaire and Cork. The concert series is called ‘The Irresistible Call’.
They asked me to write piece about the sea, so I initially wasn’t sure where to start because there are so many pieces about the sea. Honestly, I originally wanted to write a piece about the migrant crisis. Not necessarily always at the beginning but at some point in the process of a piece, I will ask myself, “why do I want to write this?”, “am I the right person to write this?”, and “is it the right time to write this piece?”. I really tried very hard to put that piece together but, for a couple of reasons, I couldn’t find quite the right text — there were a couple of parts not fully locking together for it. I think, for me, I want to be able to give each piece the respect and the time that it deserves and if I’m not in a place to be able to do that, then it’s not necessarily the right time for that specific work.
And then I found this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called ‘The Sound of the Sea’ and I completely fell in love with it. It’s an absolutely stunning poem about divine inspiration and where ideas come from, not necessarily just creatively, but about that inner voice, that inner knowing. It uses the metaphor of the sea and midnight ocean tides to evoke that idea.
[The poem] is incredibly clear in terms of its structure which is always really helpful. I love using text — a lot of the time the structure is inherent in the text — but for me there were a lot of questions around the forces. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to utilise the forces so that the concept and the atmosphere were as “awe”-some, evoking the sense of ethereal mystical power as the text does. It took me a little while to find my way into the format which it is in currently — spatially separated semichorus and choir. I’ve never written for those forces before which is very exciting.
How did you find your way into that setup?
I knew that I wanted to pull out the shushing sound that’s both inherent in the text and also very evocative of the sea, effectively [creating] this kind of spatially moving sea wave. But where the slight block was occurring was in the voices: who is speaking. There is the character of the sea and the kind of mystical force that is occurring and then there’s also the protagonist. I was trying to negotiate how to effectively translate [these characters] both into the music and the sound itself. For me, it really felt like it needed to be in two parts. I thought about double choir for a while but, in the end, I thought it would be more effective to physically separate one voice from the other. Everyone’s facing forward and you get this voice coming from effectively nowhere, you get this voice from the back.
Gorgeous, and you’ll really have the sound of the sea around you!
That’s really quite relaxing — it’ll feel like you’re by the beach or something, getting fish and chips on the go!
And moving onto your song cycle for mezzo soprano and piano trio, ‘Songs from Revered Scorned Women’. How did you choose the women that you picked? What drew you to them as people?
I had so many options for this project. The reason that I wanted to write it was wrapped up in my thinking about life and very the obvious oppressive systems for women. I was thinking back through the kinds of stories that we have grown up with; right from a young age there are stories in mythology and religion that really permeate culture. And even if you don’t necessarily think that they’re not as pervasive as they are, they’ve seeped into so much, becoming tropes in other cultural phenomenons — TV shows, theatre, books. I wanted to choose people who were instantly recognisable and people whom I had an emotional connection with. A lot of what I do is very instinct based, so if I feel an emotional connection to something then that’s what I think is interesting for me to write about.
Pandora is the first movement. When I read more in depth about her story, she was created to take the fall. The story is after [Prometheus] had brought fire to humanity, Zeus thought “right we need something terrible to balance it out”, so he asked another god [Hephaestus] to create “a beautiful evil” in order to unleash the woes of the world. She was completely set up to fail! Then we have Eve, who is obviously incredibly famous. The Mary’s — Mary, the mother of God, and Mary Magdalene. Medusa. And then Me. Each movement deals with its own facet or aspect of the patriarchy. Each woman in her own way was a separate template for misogynistic treatment, which sounds really bleak but actually this cycle as a whole is quite humorous. It’s witty in places and it’s sad in places.
I actually found Eve the most interesting to write about and research.
In what way?
I worked with one of my long-time collaborators, Emily DeDakis, and we sent things back and forth to each other. What we came to discover was that Eve was not the first woman in the garden of Eden; according to the Torah, Lilith is actually the first woman in the Garden of Eden. Lilith literally refused to be on the bottom, she refused to be sexually submissive to Adam, and so she was expelled from the Garden of Eden, becoming this mythical demon who eats children.
The story that we wrote was that Eve rocks up to the Garden of Eden and finds Adam worshipping the toothbrush that Lilith left. He’s a bit of a wet lettuce and is absolutely devastated that Lilith left. Eve is really freaked out, she’s like “what’s going on? who’s this man?” and then she has this conversation with the snake who’s just says, “oh Lilith’s gone to do bigger and better things, you could too if you wanted — all you’ve got to do is eat this apple.” She eats the apple and is then flooded with all the sin and shame.
The performer transforms into each into each character. In the middle, Eve’s character stops singing and does a bit of stand-up. A lot of Christians believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib as a helper for him — and so she tells this joke where Adam’s speaking directly to God, and God’s like, “oh I’ve made you a helper — someone to cook your food, do the laundry, have your kids, do their laundry, make their food, it’ll only cost you an arm and leg!” and then Adam says to God, “not really sure about that, what can I get for a rib?” I’ve never put jokes into my music before, so it felt a bit risky, especially because the piece itself tackles some really difficult topics. But it was really nice to find humour in the work and in the music as well.
I think that’s something that I’ve come to. I think as young composers — I certainly felt this — trying to do your best, you often feel like you’ve got to be taken really seriously, and you’ve got to make serious work. But, actually, finding fun and humour and being able to infuse my personality into the work has opened up a lot of doors for me in my own music.
When do you think that transition started in terms of feeling that you could add more humour and lightness into what you’re writing?
Maybe with this piece, you know. I just wanted to tell the story from these women’s point of views. And if you don’t like it, that’s literally fine.
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Yes! It’s about how they think and how they see the world. And also, because the whole cycle deals with such heavy themes, you need some lightness to then give that heaviness the impact. If everything is just heavy all the time, for me anyway, I don’t feel as emotionally impacted than when you have these moments of lightness. You can then see the humanity of these women, of these people — you’ve got all the shades between the light and the dark.
100% — it’s so important. It can be a difficult balance and some of it is really toes the line. The Mary’s movement is the voice of Mary the mother of God and the voice of Mary Magdalene smushed together. I was really interested in this idea of these two women with the same name who are treated completely differently. Mary, the mother of God, is exalted for her chastity and her virginity and Mary Magdalene is denigrated for her promiscuity and sexuality. And I was like, “what if we just put those two things together?”. And so the voice of the character in the movement is Mary the mother of God, and she’s asking people to hail her, and every time she gets healed she gets more and more aroused until she climaxes at the end of the piece.
It feels like less of a commentary on the women themselves and more of a commentary on the stories that organised religion has been purporting for years — that women are reduced to their sexuality; they don’t have any more depth of character.
And your value is in your purity, whatever that means.
Exactly, that’s the only thing worth value. It’s come through a lot in my work, especially in recent years, because once you see it, you don’t stop seeing it. It’s everywhere.
How did the characters inform the music that you wrote. How much, if at all, did the music change between the between the movements of the cycle?
I think in terms of the aesthetics of the music, there isn’t that much difference between the movements themselves; the through-line of the work is definitely grounded in the sound world. But what does shift is the tone of the characterisation and the tone of the text. And then the last movement is a bit of a culmination of all of the differences of the first four movements.
And that’s titled “Me”.
Yes. The last movement ‘Me’ — or the modern woman, but I wrote it from my perspective — is me grappling with all of the different themes from the first four movements. It’s about the ideas of unleashing sin in Pandora and the shame that comes with that; Eve, again, the idea of Original Sin; the Mary’s ideas of value being tied up with chastity; Medusa’s sexual assault. The text is about me (or the protagonist) walking along a beach picking up different shells that are cast-offs of all these patriarchal ideas.
Emily and I started to play with this idea of shells. What are shells? Shells are beautiful and decorative, they used to be homes for a little sea creature, but now they’re empty. Then on the flip side, we thought about different kinds of shells. A shell is also a cast off from a bullet, so carrying that violence. And I’m walking along, picking up these shells of sin and shame and victim blaming and sexual assault and all this stuff; some of which I carry with me, they belong to me, some of them don’t. And what does that mean for women? What does that look like for everybody? It’s different for everybody.
I think it’s a really impactful way to end the cycle, reflecting it both back into yourself but also to other people — seeing how the traces of these other women end up in our lives day-to-day. The systemic nature of patriarchy is still so embedded in how both men see women and also how women see women.
It’s so deeply ingrained — that’s I wanted to really get across. The last movement is set on a beach and it’s at such a granular level, that [patriarchy] is in the smallest little things.
This song cycle is getting a launch, with the UK premiere happening on 14th November in Belfast, performed by Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble and mezzo-soprano Sarah Richmond, and following performances in both London and Manchester in February (location and exact dates TBC). I’ve been very kindly awarded PRS funding to put these events on.
I’d love to come to the London iteration! Are you working with a specific singer?
I worked with an incredible singer called Jessica Azodi for the recording. She is an Australian singer who, when I met her, she lived in Berlin; I think she now is in Australia. She’s just so incredible, she really embodied all the characters. She’s just fierce — she’s so fierce.
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Carbon Women — a “choose your adventure”. I have a lot of questions about the writing process. How did you navigate having all these different avenues and making sure that whatever path people took, narratively, musically and dramaturgically would make sense?
Yeah, it was a lot! It started off as a commission for a festival in the north of Ireland called Our Place in Space. I was one of eight artists commissioned to respond to this idea and it was incredibly open-ended. There was no fixed ensemble, it didn’t even have to be live performance; you could do film or an installation or whatever you wanted.
I knew that I wanted to work with story, so I started off by reading about star constellations to get some grounding in what I thought I wanted the piece to be about. I’ve always loved stories of the stars; they’re global, these names of constellations popped up simultaneously across the world and they’re often different in different regions. Out of 88 star constellations, only three of them are women. Of the three, we have Virgo (the virgin) and Cassiopeia and Andromeda (mother and daughter). [Carbon Women] is the story of Cassiopeia and Andromeda and effectively the fact that they don’t have any agency, they’re very much punished for being women throughout their entire story.
The story is Cassiopeia is overheard boasting about how beautiful her daughter [Andromeda] is, and the person who overhears her is her sister, who’s married to Poseidon the god of the sea. She’s so incensed that Cassiopeia is speaking about her daughter in this vain way that she convinces Poseidon to go to war with Ethiopia (Cassiopeia and Cetus’ Kingdom). The only way that Poseidon will be assuaged to not go to war is if they sacrifice their daughter [Andromeda] so they chain her to a rock in the sea to be “ravaged” by the sea. She is just left on this rock waiting to get ravaged — those are the actual words in the story — and Perseus saves her on his way home flying back on Pegasus with the head of Medusa. Then they get married.
I worked with a community group of writers in my hometown of County Armagh. At this point I didn’t know that I wanted it to be a “choose your own adventure”, I just wanted to tell the story. It was good to have so many writers in a room; we worked through multiple ways of trying to tell the story in a way that felt interesting. That process was really clarifying in an exclusionary way. They really helped call ideas out and eventually, after I finished working with them, I got to the idea of the “choose your own adventure”.
In the story, the women are completely reduced to their vanity and sexuality to the point where they have no agency over their own lives at all. That’s why I ultimately turned the opera into a “choose-your-own-adventure” piece; if the women are not getting any say in their story, I thought I might as well pass it over to the audience and see what they’ve got to say.
It was such a massive project for what was not supposed to be a chamber opera. I had three or four months to write it and the whole thing is 60 minutes. I worked with my wonderful, beautiful, incredibly — uh, I’m obsessed with her — amazing collaborator Emily DeDakis. She came in as a dramaturg. We met at the Oh Yeah Centre in Belfast and got two big stacks of post-its, wrote out all of the scenes and all of the songs, and just spread it across a wall and then started moving everything around. Effectively, in two days, we worked out the entire pathway of the plot and all of the options of the branching narrative.
I wanted to make sure that I was also building in a couple of fake options. If we’d had a branching narrative for every single choice, then I’d have to write effectively 5 or 6 operas in three months. Some of the choices that people get offered are fake choices so doesn’t matter what you choose, you’re going to end up in the same position, but you don’t know that.
And that then leads to the whole idea of how much choice you have, how much agency you have.
Exactly — it was mainly to do with concept. With the whole question of agency and choice and whether or not we are in control, it got very nihilistic in the room! Of course, those couple of fake choices really helped from a structural compositional point of view, but it never feels like you don’t have a choice. It always feels like you’ve made the choice and, because of that choice, that’s what happens. The audience never knows it’s a false choice.
Were there different endings or does it always come the same ending?
It always comes back to the same ending. One of the final choices is “does Andromeda save of herself or does she wait for Perseus to save her?”.
What did audiences pick?
Almost always they picked that she was going to save herself which, from an ideological point of view, is excellent. But from a musical point of view, it meant that almost always we missed Perseus’ theme which was very Prince Charming-esque — kind of like in Into the Woods, it’s grandiose and boastful. Obviously, I was glad they want her to save herself (which is the right choice morally), but musically I did love Perseus. He was a hot dummy.
We also had Prometheus as our narrator. From a forces and form perspective, an issue was trying to get everything across in ways that were musically interesting and narratively expressive with a budget for three performers. We had one singer, piano and cello.
The entire story is built from conversations that people have with each other — “she said that and then I said this to this person” — and so one of the mechanisms by which that was delivered was that the cellist (because the cello is so close to the voice) effectively acts like the second person in a conversation. I wanted the audience to feel like they were really watching from the sidelines; I wrote out what I wanted the conversations to be and then put the secondary person’s part into the cello part. It was like it was spoken, and then Prometheus would translate to the conversation. So, we would hear the words from the singer, we’d hear the cello line, and then we’d hear Prometheus reacting in real time. We had to make it the tea. The character of Prometheus very much needed to be on the audience’s side, wanting the audience to win.
Did you have a favourite route? Did you have one that you wished people would choose?
It was with Perseus at the end… After I finished the run, I was like, “I need to edit the music for Andromeda saving herself” because that is the best option from a feminist perspective. One of my favourite lines is when the audience chooses for Perseus not to save her, he flies off and Prometheus says, “I’m sure he heard your cries for help, he’s probably just away to wash off all that blood”.
That piece has been picked up and will be adapted into a slightly different format. I’m working with a company called HoloEdge. We got an Immersive Arts Grant to take the main idea and adapt it into an immersive format for domes, like a planetarium — it’ll be shown in that kind of space as opposed to in a live concert format.
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Narrative and storytelling come up a lot in your work and so I was wondering, what is it about stories that draws you to them? And a secondary question, is what particular stories do you find that you are most interested in?
I’ve always really loved stories; I used to read voraciously as a child. I’ve got a really vivid imagination, and I spend quite a lot of time in my brain. Storytelling is such a human thing, we’ve done it forever — telling stories around a fire in homes. It’s a big part of Irish culture as well; in music sessions, there’s always a kind of storytelling element.
I also think it not only levels the playing field, because everyone listening to the story is having a similar experience, but [also] everyone gets to suspend their disbelief for however long the story lasts. It’s like everybody in the space puts everything else down, and are collectively in a room together holding space, using their imaginations, and allowing the stories to take over themselves. It’s a really beautiful mindful creative experience and it’s something that I’ve always really loved.
I keep coming back to it in music because I think it’s where personally I feel my most comfortable. I feel really at home in narrative work, and in storytelling and putting myself in the place of other characters. I find that immensely exciting. Like, how would this character say this phrase; how would this character think; what are the interactions like with another character; what’s the quality of the thought that they’re having? There are so many questions that come up when you put yourself in the place of another person and that’s what I find most emotionally satisfying.
I’ve got a real soft spot for stories that exist just slightly outside of today, although I find beauty obviously in [the more mundane] as well. I love pulling apart stories around the nature of humanity. It can lead to some pretty heavy places, which is then why I think stories where you suspend your disbelief really work.
There are so many themes within those stories that relate to the day-to-day, but it feels less aggressive somehow just because it’s slightly removed from you.
Absolutely. I think you can still very much connect to that kind of material but there’s something other about it that is really satisfying to use. I love folklore. I think folklore and myths are really interesting, and it harkens back to what I said earlier — that humans have used stories to pass on information, morals, advice and practical things forever. I just find it really interesting and really beautiful and putting that into music is what I find really exciting.
I wrote a piece last year (March 2025). It’s a piece for the Irish Chamber Orchestra and a piper called Mick O’Brien on the solo Uilleann pipes. It was based on the Mórrígan, a Celtic goddess, and she’s so fierce. She’s an omen of death and she’s got ties with various other terrifying mythical stories. She’s kind of the bridge between humanity and the underworld.
Were the pipes embodying the Mórrígan or was she the whole ensemble?
I got really interested with not only her as a character but also the persistence of worship to her. There are still pagans today in modern culture who worship the Mórrígan. I became completely fascinated with this idea of this really old mythological goddess who still very much has roots in people’s affection and in people’s worship today.
The first movement was ‘An Omen’. It was all characterisation of the Mórrígan and who she is — very bleak, very fiery. The second movement was ‘A Prayer’; so I try to imagine what it would be like to pray to such a violent and unforgiving goddess of death. And then the third movement was ‘An Answer’, so theoretically if the Mórrígan were to answer you — not necessarily if she was to answer your prayer, but more like the result of that worship; how does she take the worship. I became really fascinated with wanting to pray to a god that is seen mythologically as so violent and is so terrifying.
Would you want her to respond? I don’t feel like I would…
Moving onto some more questions about you as a composer — what’s your origin story? How did you come into composition?
I grew up in rural Ireland. I’m from County Armagh. I grew up in an Irish music tradition, so I started off as a fiddle player and as an Irish traditional singer. All my siblings and I, we’re all traddies. I learned classical music at the same time, piano and violin, and then joined the Ulster Youth Choir which was my first real experience in very good quality choral music-making and that led me to study music in Manchester at the university.
I sort of fell into composing, really. I’d always write my own fiddle tunes instead of practicing real tunes — I don’t know what that says about me, like I didn’t want to practice! At university, I got asked to write a piece by one of my friends for a choir that he ran. I then entered the ORA Singers Composition Prize and won. That slowly snowballed. I got into a couple of young artists schemes and things like that.
For me, it’s that idea again of having so much in your head, of having a little world in your brain with all the stories, suspending that disbelief, and having so much in there that needs to come out.
I feel that. With your folk upbringing, how much do you think that permeates your more contemporary classical writing? Do you see those things as going hand in hand or more separate?
I think it’s such a beautiful and grounding art form. It’s ever-changing and I think, whilst it’s not always necessarily obviously present in my music, there is a lot my music that takes from folk music. The modes and the scales are a constant source of inspiration and so, even if something might not aesthetically sound very folk-like, the harmony almost always finds its way.
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You’ve touched on this a little bit earlier, but have you found that your relationship or approach to composition has changed since you’ve started writing?
I think the most exciting development in my compositional practice has been my approach to process. I think it’s something that can be very flexible and is interesting to play around with. [I’ve been] thinking about how the quality of the piece changes (not quality in terms of standard but quality in terms of musical quality) — does the musical quality of the work change with the change in process? About how your approach to something facilitates your piece, and if changing how you approach something informs your practice in a real way.
In your process, what have you noticed that’s made differences to your music?
I think immersion is the first one. I’ve written a couple of pieces on residencies where I’ve been completely immersed in something for a relatively short period of time. I’d have done quite a lot of heavy research prep in the lead up to it and then have 5 days of being completely immersed in it, of living inside it, of allowing it to flow out of me. That is such a privilege — to get to be in that position of almost acting as a conduit where the ideas are all there and they just flow out of you relatively seamlessly.
I think part of the struggle of day-to-day life is that there are blocks to that flow — I’ve got to do the washing, I’ve got to do the dishes. Part of the system of adapting my process [and trying to find that immersion in real life] is figuring out how to best facilitate those blocks. So maybe, instead of doing loads of reading research, I’ll go to an art gallery and sit and immerse myself in that environment.
And honestly, this isn’t necessarily going to be a positive thing to say, but I’ve really struggled in the last couple of months and years with social media as a complete creative block. The addiction of social media at points has completely suppressed my creative abilities and it’s something that was genuinely concerning last year. In my experience of composition, my brain needs to sit idle for quite a long time in order to make connections. Your brain needs space to be able to just do its thing and chug along — to make those links between disparate things and disparate signs and art forms. Part of my creative process in the last year has been, “okay how do I figure out setting time limits”, or the question of “using social media to promote yourself as an artist versus it actually hindering your creative practice”. I think this might be the case for a lot of creatives — it’s almost a creative recovery from social media.
Artistic process is everything in my opinion and it’s so impactful in determining the craft and the quality of your piece: how you approach things and the kinds of questions that you ask yourself in interrogating the piece as you’re writing.
I think, like you say, immersion is so important because you need to feel like what you’re making is coming from all angles around you; but then when you’re in this other digital world which is so fast moving and you can feel your attention span going, and suddenly this whole immersive world that you’re trying to sit in feels very boring.
It’s a real liminal space. I’ll notice if my algorithm is particularly negative, I’ll then have really absorbed that energy, and I carry that with me and I carry that into the music that I write. It’s been a lot of really asking myself questions about how I live my day-to-day and what that looks like for my work. It feels like quite a trivial thing to talk about, but it really affects you. I’d be really interested in hearing what other people have to say about it.
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In your creative recovery, as you put it, what is the been something that you have been holding on to or that’s helped?
I have this diary. It’s a Japanese tea diary that my in-laws got me from Japan. I’ve been using it as a creative diary, so anything that I see or hear (books, films, concerts, pieces etc.), anything that I’ve loved or hated, whatever I’ve had some feelings about, I write it down. I have to write in it every single week, a couple of times a week. It’s keeping me more mindfully aware of what I’m consuming and the kind of art I’ve taken in.
It’s predominantly got films and books in it at the minute. A couple of pieces but I’ve watched a couple of really gorgeous films in the last few weeks. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I watched for the first time. It’s possibly one of the best films I’ve ever seen — so beautiful. When I watch a film, I’m so tuned into the music, obviously, but the lack of music in this film was so special, and the soundscape was so well crafted. It was very sparsely scored, and it really just made you focus on the nuances of the characters and their relationship. Everything just felt so intimate. I absolutely loved it.
I’ve been trying to keep myself mindful and creatively aware. Logging all the beautiful things that I see helps me connect what I then could draw influence from to spark ideas.
What kinds of influences do you have?
One of my favourite composers who I come back to all the time is an American composer called Gabriel Kahane. I find his work completely arresting. In particular, he’s got an album called Book of Travelers. He rode the train for about a year meeting people, writing stories of their lives and just having conversations with them. He’s got a singularly focused writing style that makes you feel like you’re in the room with the person. It’s so descriptive in an achingly beautiful way. The combination of the harmony, his piano playing, his singing, his songwriting just makes such an incredible album.
I draw a lot from songwriting and a lot from theatre. I love going to theatre. I get influence and inspiration from everywhere. I love independent cinema. I go to see quite a lot of indie films. Folk music, as well. I have been listening to a fiddle player this week called Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. He plays the fiddle, but he also plays a hardanger fiddle. He’s got a couple of albums that I love. They’re incredibly meditative and beautiful in a really understated way.
I also visit a lot of art galleries. There is something about staring at a painting, just noticing the details. I’m quite a visual person and so, even when I’m listening to music, to get the most out of the experience for me I have to close my eyes because I’m always looking for things to look at. If I’m really wanting to focus on the music, I’ve got to close my eyes — which is why I think visual art affects me so much.
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Áine Mallon’s song cycle Songs from Revered Scorned Women premieres on 14th November in Belfast with Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble – learn more and buy tickets:
Áine’s upcoming choral commission The Sound of the Sea is touring across Ireland with Chamber Choir Ireland from 27-29th November – more information and tickets:
Learn more about Áine and her practice:
References/Links:
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘The Sound of the Sea’ (1875)
- Ariela Pelaia, ‘Lilith in the Torah, Talmud, and Midrash’ (2019), Learn Religions
- Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine – Into the Woods (1986)
- Danielle Ní Dhighe, ‘The Morrígan’ (1996, 1997), republished on Mythical Ireland
- Gabriel Kahane – Book of Travelers (Nonesuch Records, 2018)
