IAC Commissions: Aoife O'Donovan

“A vocalist of unerring instinct.”—New York Times

Grammy Award-winning artist Aoife O’Donovan is renowned for both her solo and collaborative work. Aoife has worked with some of the preeminent names in music, including Alison Krauss; Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek) and Sarah Jarosz in the Grammy-winning trio I’m With Her; and Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, as the featured vocalist on their Grammy-winning project The Goat Rodeo Sessions. She was co-founder and frontwoman of the string band, Crooked Still, has performed with more than a dozen symphonies, and was a regular contributor to the NPR variety show Live From Here.

She has released two solo albums, 2016’s Magic Hour, which includes a New York Times Best Song of 2016, and spring 2020’s Bull Frogs Croon, plus the live album Man In A Neon Coat: Live From Cambridge with her In The Magic Hour touring band.

Photo credit: Rich Gilligan

Scottish vocalist and guitarist Kris Drever was named BBC Radio 2's 2017 folk artist of the year. He has collaborated with Cream’s Jack Bruce, Tinariwen, Joan As Police Woman, Jerry Douglas, Danny Thompson, Rosanne Cash, Eddi Reader, Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, the Lost Spell Songs collective, and many more. 

The pandemic has forced humanity into an involuntary state of uncertainty that may last a long time. This is troubling, of course, but, as with any of life’s terribly sad moments, is not without redemptive possibility. We are challenged to find a new comfort level with uncertainty as a more constant companion. 

Like everyone, we at Irish Arts Center are entering a new phase of grappling with all of this. We still don’t know when it will be safe or allowable to gather in groups for live performing arts experiences. We continue to innovate our digital programming and prepare for our magnificent new building that awaits us, soon enough we hope. We develop scenarios and contingency plans. 

And we challenge ourselves to lean into the moment. For this, as ever, we rely on the artists. 

To that end, we have commissioned more than two dozen artists reflecting a range of perspectives across our artistic community, to create short works that respond to the idea of finding grace in uncertainty, to find meaning in the chaos, and perhaps even some redemption, as we recognize the fear and sadness we feel. 

In his work On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic just weeks after 9/11, John Adams sought to create a “memory space” for those who suffered loss of life, of loved ones, of innocence, and to evoke the feeling “that we are all united by a common bond of humanity.” 

In a similar spirit, we wish to inspire a volume of artistic responses that might form a kind of tapestry of emotion, a chronicle of the moment, work that can be appreciated now and for the long-term.

The common bond of humanity unites these artists—and will carry us all through this moment.