RCC Artists-in-Residence 2023
IRIS brings together 3 artists from different disciplines to present a multiple genre, cross art form collaboration, inspired by ideas of deconstruction, fragmentation and a shared love of improvisation. Using both music and video, guitarist Phil Robson, pianist Izumi Kimura & artist Jaki Irvine invite you to take a musical and visual journey through our triple-layered iris ‘shutter’, controlling what we see, by the light it lets in. A vivid experience for all willing to step into the space!
Phil Robson is a UK born, multi-award-winning guitarist/composer, who was a seminal part of the London, then later NYC music scenes for many years and is now based in Northwest Co. Roscommon. He’s led bands featuring jazz legends such as David Liebman, Mark Turner, Billy Hart, James Genus & many more as well as working as a band member with Barbra Streisand, Kenny Wheeler, Charles Earland, Donny McCaslin, Django Bates, The BBC big Band and a diverse spectrum of internationally celebrated musicians.
In Europe he’s renowned as the co-leader of the cult UK band ‘Partisans’ with saxophonist Julian Siegel and for his work with partner and great singer/songwriter, Christine Tobin. In New York he’s best known for his collaboration with the great saxophonist/composer Jed Levy. He’s also a recording artist with highly acclaimed albums who performs at major venues and festivals around the world. “Phil Robson’s music, on a first hearing, always gives me that feeling I haven’t yet heard right the way through it to the other side. Yes, there are moments of beauty and external allure, yes there is variety. But there is also a depth which brings one back wanting to revisit, to hear more and more…unmissable.” londonjazznews.com
Pianist Izumi Kimura has performed extensively throughout the country and abroad since moving to Ireland from Japan in 1995. She has worked with some of the leading performers and ensembles from both disciplines of classical, jazz and improvised musics. Her main works in the past decade are contemporary music across genres and improvisation. She has worked in various formats with ensembles and small groups, including RTE Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Michael d’Arcy, Mia Cooper, Ken Edge, Benjamin Dwyer, Bill Dowdall, Paul Roe, Cora Venus Lunny, Andreea Banciu, Elizabeth Hilliard and many more from the world of classical/contemporary classical music, and with jazz and improvising musicians including Barry Guy, Gerry Hemingway, Tommy Halferty, Ronan Guilfoyle, Michael Buckley, Joe O’Callaghan, Oki Itaru, Dominique Pifarély, Benoît Delbecq, Stéphane Payen, Sarah Buechi, Lina Andonovska, Mathew Jacobson, Nick Roth, Colm O’Hara, and more. She has also collaborated with artists and sound artists including Anthony Kelly, David Stalling and Jaki Irvine. ‘A fearless explorer of the contemporary music landscape … Kimura brings a combination of feral creativity and technical virtuosity to the stage that belies her calm demeanour’ The Irish Times ‘Meditative, subtly provocative, impressionistic and consistently alluring’ All About Jazz.
Jaki Irvine uses video, installation, photography, music composition and writing to explore the complex ways we imagine ourselves and the world around us, a process which, for Irvine, has both philosophical and political implications. Overheard conversations and everyday incidents, casually observed, often form the starting point for Irvine’s work. She weaves real events into fictions, making films and videos that reflect on the fragmented, mysterious and often absurd nature of the human condition.
Whether in single-screen format or in more complex installations, Irvine creates open-ended narratives in which image and musical score overlap, coalesce and diverge. For example, If the Ground Should Open… (2016) is a multi-channel sound and video installation commemorating the Easter Rising. It takes the names of two forgotten freedom fighters Elizabeth O’Farrell and Julia Grenan as ‘the ground’ of a score for nine musicians. Irvine composed the eleven tracks using an oral scoring system originally developed for Scottish Highland pipes. Irvine describes how ‘the past and the present are reflected through a lens that is complicated, joyful, furious and hopeful’.
Irvine is a member of Aosdána, is represented by the Kerlin Gallery (Dublin) and Frith Street Gallery (London), with works in the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
RESONATE is a Music Network artist residency programme in partnership with glór, Ionad Cultúrtha, The National Opera House, Triskel Arts Centre, The Dock and Regional Cultural Centre.’
