Out of Nowhere

‘Out of Nowhere’ is a large-scale immersive work for piano and electronics which draws upon material from the traditional Irish air Pórt Na BPúcaí (known in English as Song of the Fairies), a ghostly and beautiful tune believed to have originated in the Blasket Islands off the remote South West coast of Ireland. The composer of the air remains anonymous but the story goes that a fiddler was awoken in the night by the sound of this tune coming off the waves outside and believing it was music of the ghosts, transcribed it. A more recent theory is that what was actually heard was the song of the humpback whale as it migrated south.

Whilst researching the tune I also learned that the people of the Blaskets evacuated the Islands in the 1950s due to the increasingly harsh conditions of remote Island life and the migration of younger generations to mainland Ireland or the USA. In the three distinct parts of Out of Nowhere I never wanted to reinterpret what is already a stunningly beautiful tune but rather drawn upon its esoteric origins and both the folklore and reality which surround it.

Most appealing perhaps is the idea that this music could have come from the ocean, interpreted by humans but not created by them, still existing after their eventual departure.

This work was commissioned for Xenia Pestova by INTER/actions Festival for Interactive Electronic Music / Frontiers+ Festival / Cork Orchestral Society and was made possible with funding through Beyond Borders from the PRS for Music Foundation, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council of Wales.