IAC Commissions: Dana Lyn & Kyle Sanna

“[Dana] Lyn and [Kyle] Sanna challenge our expectations and assumptions about Irish music [and] invite us to consider our perceptions of the natural world and how attuned we are to its rhythms and phrases.”—Boston Irish Reporter

New York-based fiddler and composer Dana Lyn inhabits a musical world somewhere in the Venn diagram of '70s art rock, classical, traditional Irish and improvised music. She has worked and performed with a wide variety of artists, such as Tony Award-winning musicians Stew and Heidi Rodewald; Irish poet Louis de Paor; actor-directors Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio; performance artist Taylor Mac; avant cellist Hank Roberts; Grammy Award-winning vocalists Loudon Wainwright and Susan McKeown; the late great Scots fiddler Johnny Cunningham; D’Angelo and the Vanguard and the Elysian Fields, among others. As a composer, Lyn has received commissions from the Brooklyn Rider, the Apple Hill String Quartet, the National Arts Council of Ireland, violist Nicholas Cords, the Los Angeles Inception Orchestra and the New Orchestra of Washington. In 2017, she was an artist in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and Irish Arts Center. Recent releases include an album of original music inspired by visual artist Jay Defeo, as well as the sophomore release of her collaboration with actor Vincent D’Onofrio, Slim Bone Head Volt.

“[Dana] Lyn and [Kyle] Sanna challenge our expectations and assumptions about Irish music [and] invite us to consider our perceptions of the natural world and how attuned we are to its rhythms and phrases.”—Boston Irish Reporter

Guitarist and composer Kyle Sanna has collaborated with and performed alongside many of today’s virtuosos (Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile) and great interpreters of Irish music (Martin Hayes, Seamus Egan, Kevin Burke). As a performer, Kyle has appeared at international venues including the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and Sydney’s ABC studios, as well as Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival stateside. His arrangements have been performed by Grammy-winning banjo pioneer Bela Fleck and the Oregon and Colorado Symphony Orchestras, Germany’s SWR Orchestra, guitar icon Kaki King, K-pop star Rain, cellist Jan Vogler and the Knights, Grammy-winning Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne-Sofie Von Otter with Brooklyn Rider, renowned fiddler Martin Hayes, and Yo-Yo Ma. His compositions have been performed at the Bach House in Eisenach, Germany, the Oregon Bach Festival, Art Basel Miami Beach, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, and Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. 

Kyle studied jazz at the University of Oregon and composition at the Université Lumière Lyon II in France. He lives in Brooklyn and is a member of Kinan Azmeh’s CityBand, Marika Hughes & Bottom Heavy, the Seamus Egan Project, Ground Patrol, We the Gleaners, and a duo with violinist Dana Lyn.

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.