Roscommon

May Newsletter

Dear friends,

It’s been a while,

Took some time to re-acclimatise after the a lazarus soul Tour de France with the mighty Divine Comedy. I also had a diploma recital to prepare for and was on the jury for classical guitar exams here in France. From swinging a Gretsch around my head at the Salle Pleyel in Paris to Bach preludes in front of a jury, I’m still, after all these years, constantly amazed at the variety of places the old wooden box can take you.

I am very happy that Roscommon Arts Centre are mounting the Au Revoir Tristesse exhibition that myself and Steve Wickham created a couple of years ago. The exhibition started out with a zoom conversation between myself and Steve. I had seen his series of paintings called “50 Nights in a Dublin Hotel,” and thought, how unfair! Not only is Steve one of the best musicians in Ireland, now he’s one of the best painters too! At the time I was coming to the end of writing five pieces for classical guitar inspired by Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse which I was calling “Au Revoir Tristesse,” and had the idea to ask Steve if he would be interested in making a companion painting for each piece for a multimedia exhibition. Axis Ballymun were a huge part of making the whole thing happen and the first time I saw his paintings was at Axis for the installation of the exhibition, many months later. I wrote the following for the book of the exhibition :

“Nature is a huge driving force in my music. To try to evoke phenomena in nature that may have become banal to us, like the night sky, the wind in the trees or the sound of the sea. Debussy said that music is the miraculous correspondence between nature and the imagination. I found Bonjour Tristesse to beautifully encapsulate this. Along with her descriptions of sadness, the delicious melancholy of youth, of solitude and the fatalism of first love, it was Sagan’s descriptions of nature, so visceral, from the moonlight shimmering on the water to the the scent of pine cones in the forest which had such an effect on me.

While I was composing this music I began to see the paintings which my great friend Steve Wickham was making and found them to be as mind-blowing as his music. Steve and I have made a lot of music together over the years and it’s been beautiful and inspiring to see someone who can lay claim to being one of Ireland’s greatest ever musicians give expression to his unique artistic voice through a completely different medium. I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful and add such a rich extra depth to this piece if he were, without any interference from me, to make a companion canvas for each bagatelle, responding in paint to the music which in turn was responding to the words on the page of Françoise Sagan. It took me a long time to muster up the courage to ask him but I’m so glad I did. I think the paintings he has made are mysterious and beautiful and they complement, challenge and elevate the music so much more than I could have dreamed.”

The exhibition will open at Roscommon Arts Centre in July and I’m so grateful to them. As part of the run, I’ll be doing a recital at the venue on August 1st. Tickets on sale now from this link. I’ll play for about an hour including Au Revoir Tristesse in full and some other pieces too and then myself and Steve might play a few tunes together. I hope lots of you can make the trip.

Over on Patreon, since my last post, there has been a 45 minute film of home movies from the a lazarus soul tour with Divine Comedy, a 6 track EP of live recordings from The Candle From the Shadow, the stems of The Heart of Saint Laurence O’Toole, a separate live video of that song, three unreleased demos from The Tiny Pieces Left Behind, an alternate version of one of the tracks from Au Revoir Tristesse, a vlog from the Saint Patrick’s Cathedral gig with als, and an exclusive film of “End here, Us then,” my new setting of Anna Livia’s final monologue from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

Thank you so much to all who support the Patreon, I enjoy sharing the music over there.

I hope to see lots of you in Roscommon. Or if not, I’ll be at Smithfield for an acoustic set with Brian and Anton for the Luke Kelly Festival on the 23rd of this month. Hoping to catch the Donal Lunny film too! Come up and say hello. Until the next time,

Take care,

Joe