IAC Commissions | Grásta: Grace in Uncertainty

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.

“Barry’s language drags you into a strange, darkly lyrical world.”—Paris Review

Kevin Barry is the author most recently of the novel Night Boat To Tangier, a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year for 2019. His third collection of stories, That Old Country Music, will be published in the US in January 2021. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize, and the Sunday Times Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Harper’s, and elsewhere. He also works as a playwright and as a screenwriter. He lives in County Sligo, Ireland.

Promax World Gold Award winner and World Soundtrack and IFTA Awards nominee Liam Bates is a composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor working in film, musical theatre, and the concert hall. Liam’s movie scores include Last Passenger, directed by Omid Nooshin for NDF International and Pathé; Earthbound, directed by Alan Brennan for Paperdreams and Rippleworld Pictures; Out of the Blue and I Hate Musicals, directed by Michael Lavelle; Mr Crocodile in the Cupboard, directed by Morgan Bushe; Ghostwood, a horror movie for Maxim Pictures produced by Ned Dowd; An Créatur, directed by Peter Foott; Pump Action, directed by Frank Reid Beechinor; The Faeries of Blackheath Woods and The Puppet, directed by Ciarán Foy; and La Jalousie and Razor Fish, starring Brenda Fricker.

"One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation."—Sunday Times

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has two novels, Malcolm Orange Disappears and The Fire Starters; a short story collection, Children’s Children (Liberties Press); and two micro-fiction collections, Postcard Stories and Postcard Stories 2 (Emma Press). The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland in 2019 and the Kitschies Prize for speculative fiction in 2020. It was also shortlisted for the Dalkey Book Prize in 2020. The Last Resort, a ten-part BBC Radio 4 short story series and accompanying short story collection, was published by Doubleday in April 2021. In 2018, Jan was the inaugural Translink/Irish Rail Roaming Writer in Residence on the Trains of Ireland. She was the Open Book Scotland Writer in Lockdown 2020.

"Eoin Colfer's [work for adult readers] has all the charm, wit and imagination of his beloved children's fiction."—RTÉ

Eoin Colfer is the author of the internationally bestselling Artemis Fowl books, which has sold in excess of 25 million copies worldwide. His writing has won numerous awards, including the UK Children’s Book of the Year, the Irish Children’s Book of the Year, and the German Children’s Book of the Year, and has been made into acclaimed films and television series. Eoin also wrote crime novels Plugged and Screwed, which feature Irish bouncer Daniel McEvoy and are being developed for television by Double Nickel productions.

Eoin has collaborated with some of his favourite writers and artists, including Oliver Jeffers, Andrew Donkin, Giovanni Rigano and PJ Lynch, and has recently finished a two year term as Ireland’s Children’s Laureate. For theatre, Eoin has written scripts for the musicals The Lords of Love and Noël with composer Liam Bates, and the plays Holy Mary and My Real Life have toured nationally. Eoin’s latest books are The Fowl Twins and Highfire, a fantasy novel for big children.

“One of the most exciting talents to emerge in contemporary dance.”—The Irish Times
 
Oona Doherty studied at the London School Of Contemporary Dance, University of Ulster and LABAN London, where she received her honors BA and post graduate degrees in contemporary dance studies. She has been performing dance theatre internationally since 2010 with companies such as TRASH (NL), Abbattoir Ferme (BE), Veronika Riz (IT), Emma Martin/United Fall (IE), and Enda Walsh (IE). Her choreography, including Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus (2015/20), Hard to Be Soft—A Belfast Prayer (2017/20) and Lady Magma (2019/21), has toured extensively in Europe to critical acclaim. Awards include Aerowaves Selected Artist and Best Performer at the 2016 Dublin Fringe Festival (Hope Hunt), Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, Cognisance Grenoble judges' first place and audience 1st place, and the 2017 Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council Northern Ireland. Oona has been awarded the following residencies: 2016 MAC Theatre Belfast HATCH Artist, 2016/17 A Prime Cut Productions REVEAL Artist, 2017/18 Maison de la Danse Associate Artist Lyon, and 2017/19 La Briquetterie Associate Artist Paris.

“Marie Howe's poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.”—Stanley Kunitz

Marie Howe, a featured artist in IAC’s 2017 PoetryFest, has published four volumes of poetry. Her work has also appeared in publications including the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and the Partisan Review.

"This uncanny comic actor has always exuded the sense that he is listening to music that no one else can hear."—New York Times

Actor, dancer, performance artist, producer, director and writer Bill Irwin has earned some of the arts and entertainment industry’s highest recognition for his work, including Tony, OBIE, Drama Desk, and New York Drama Critics Circle awards, and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation.

Photo credit: Nir Arieli

"Junk Ensemble have guts and ingenuity."—The Irish Times

Junk Ensemble was founded in Dublin in 2004 by twin sisters Megan and Jessica Kennedy. The company is committed to engaging diverse audiences through the creation and presentation of brave, imaginative, and accessible work that sheds light on important human issues relevant to society today. Current Project Arts Centre associate artists, Firkin Crane dance artists-in-residence, and previous Tate artists-in-residence Junk Ensemble is a multi-award winning company that has built a reputation as one of Ireland’s leading voices in dance. Junk Ensemble frequently collaborates with artists from other disciplines to produce a rich mix of visual and performance styles that challenge the traditional audience/performer relationship. This approach has led to productions being created in non-traditional or found spaces as well as more conventional theatre spaces. The company often work directly with communities in the creation and performance of their work. Their work has toured to New York, Europe, and throughout the U.K. and Ireland. 

Previous works include A Different Wolf (Cork Opera House/Cork Midsummer Festival 2019), The Bystander (Dublin Theatre Festival 2018), Dolores (Dublin Dance Festival 2018), Man at the Door (Number 54) / Cork Midsummer Festival 2018), Soldier Still (National Tour 2018/Belfast Festival/Dublin Fringe 2017), Walking Pale (GPO Witness History Commission/Dublin Dance Festival 2016), It Folds, a joint production with Brokentalkers (Edinburgh Festival 2016/Mayfest Bristol 2016/Dublin Fringe, Abbey Theatre 2015), Dusk Ahead (NYC La MaMa Moves Festival 2015/National Tour 2015/Dublin Theatre Festival 2013/Kilkenny Arts Festival 2013), The Falling Song (8-venue UK & National Tour 2014/Belfast Festival 2012/Dublin Dance Festival 2012), Bird with Boy (UK Tour 2016/Dublin Theatre Festival 2012/Dublin Fringe Festival 2011), Sometimes We Break (Tate Commission 2012), Five Ways to Drown (National Tour 2012/Dublin Dance Festival 2010), Pygmalian Revisited (Áix-en-Provence Festival Commission 2010), Drinking Dust (2008), and The Rain Party (2007).

Photo credit: Ted Jones

"Grenades...represents Kater’s breakthrough moment as a vital roots storyteller.”—Rolling Stone

A Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian, Kaia Kater grew up between two worlds: her family’s deep ties to folk music and the years she spent soaking up Appalachian music in West Virginia. Her first EP, Old Soul, was released in 2013 when she was just out of high school, followed by 2015’s Sorrow Bound and 2016’s Nine Pin. Kaia toured Nine Pin, which won a Canadian Folk Music Award and a Stingray Rising Star Award, from Ireland to Iowa, including stops at the Kennedy Center, Hillside Festival, and London's O2 Shepherd's Bush. Her third album, Grenades (2018, Folkways/acronym Records), was nominated for a 2019 JUNO Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year.

 Photo credit: Raezavel Argulla

"The word 'animated' may not be enough to describe Korn...she [owns] the room."—WXXI

Tamar Korn has been a full-time New York-based vocalist for more than a decade, playing a repertoire steeped in early twentieth century American music. From traditional New Orleans and 1920s and ‘30s jazz to western swing, early country, roots and folk, gospel and bluegrass (and now endeavoring towards singing Yiddish music), Tamar’s love is of both of the lyrical traditions in song as well as the improvisational capacity to feel and play musical sounds. She is noted for playing “instrumentally” with her voice. Tamar performs both solo and with collaborators and in ensembles and bands, and has toured in the States and to Canada, Scandinavia, France, Lithuania, and China.

 Photo credit: Nir Arieli

Originally from Boston and currently living in New York City, Dennis Lichtman is a multi-instrumentalist (mainly clarinet, fiddle, and mandolin) who is deeply entrenched in early- to mid-1900s American music, from traditional jazz and swing to bluegrass and western swing. Since 2007, Dennis has been the clarinetist and bandleader of the famed Tuesday night traditional jazz jam session at Mona's in downtown New York, which was recently profiled in the New York Times, and has been described by the Wall Street Journal as "ground zero for an emerging late-night scene of young swing and traditional jazz players.” 

Lichtman released two albums in 2017: Queens Jazz – A Living Tradition and The Brain Cloud: Live at Barbès. The former features ten original compositions inspired by the migration of jazz legends into the borough of Queens, NY, in the 1920s and 1930s. The latter documents a Monday night residency in Brooklyn, which Lichtman’s western swing sextet, the Brain Cloud, has held for years. 

Lichtman has performed at Carnegie Hall, major festivals throughout the United States, and on stages in Europe, Brazil, and China. He is on the faculty of the Welbourne Traditional Jazz Music Camp in Middleburg, VA, and has led college master classes and inner-city school workshops through the Midori Foundation, Lincoln Center’s Meet The Artist Series, and Beijing’s Ping-Pong Productions. 

Photo credit: Aidan Grant

“Loah's voice is stunning and so is the music she makes.”—NPR

Loah is Sallay Matu Garnett, an artist and performer of Irish / Sierra Leonean origin who grew up between Maynooth, County Kildare in Ireland and West Africa. 

She has just returned to Ireland after starring as Mary Magdalene in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s iconic Jesus Christ Superstar at the Barbican, London in 2019. With her unique blend of Afro-folksoul, she released her debut EP, This Heart, in 2017, followed by an entire EP of remixes in 2018. She has featured on records by Lisa Hannigan and Kíla, co-written with Hozier, and shared stages with greats in multiple genres such as the Wainwrights, Paul Brady, Bill Whelan, Bilal, and Cassandra Wilson. She has toured in Ireland, the UK, Sierra Leone, Europe and the USA, and has multiple television and film appearances to her name (Striking Out, Finding Joy, Girl from Mogadishu). Over the last year, she's released a number of musical collaborations with Irish, Icelandic, and Sierra Leonean producers, including her sister Fehdah, rapper Drizilik, and her regular collaborator and Corkonian, Bantum. This year, she continues to release music both with Bantum and solo.

Photo credit: Caolan Barron

“[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.

“When distinguished tin whistle or flute players over the past quarter of a century come to mind, Irish traditional music aficionados invariably will add Joanie Madden’s name to the list. Her music is pure art, compelling and creative, vibrant and virtuosic.”—Irish Echo

Joanie Madden is flutist and tin whistle player born in New York to Irish parents from Counties Clare and Galway. She became the first American to win the All-Ireland Fleadh title on the whistle and is the top selling whistle player of all time with 500,000 album sales, with performances on over 200 CDs, including three Grammy-winning releases. Joanie has been recognized by Irish America magazine as one the Top 100 Irish Americans and Top 50 Most Powerful Irish Women in the world, and won a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Music Awards. She has been immortalized in her native Bronx with a street named after her.

For the past 35 years, Joanie has performed thousands of concerts while touring the world both solo and as leader of the renowned female music and dance group Cherish the Ladies.

“Blazingly daring … [McBride’s] work is a visceral throb … [Her] language plunges us into the center of experiences that are often raw, unpleasant, frightening, but also vital.”—The New Yorker

Eimear McBride is the author of three novels: Strange Hotel, The Lesser Bohemians and A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. She is the recipient of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award. In 2017 she was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading. She lives in London.

Photo credit: Sophie Bassouls

"World renowned … Over decades, McComiskey has played an integral role in building the now thriving Baltimore-DC Irish traditional music scene."—National Endowment for the Arts

NEA National Heritage fellow Billy McComiskey, hailed as “the best Irish accordion player in America,” sits at the center of the revival of traditional music with the trail-blazing groups the Irish Tradition, Pride of New York, and Green Fields of America.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile

“One of the greatest flute players in the world.”—BBC Music

Mike McGoldrick, from Manchester, England, is a multi-instrumentalist (wooden flute, low whistles, uilleann pipes) and composer. He has worked with artists including Vicente Amigo, Zac Brown Band, Xosé Manuel Budiño, Jerry Douglas, Julie Fowlis, Darrell Scott Nolwenn Leroy, Tim O’Brien, Dirk Powell and Kate Rusby, and has played with Mark Knopfler since 2009 and with the Transatlantic Sessions since 2007. His style of Irish traditional music often incorporates jazz, funk, and African and Indian rhythmic influences. In 2018, Mike released his fifth solo album, ARC; The Wishing Tree with John Doyle and John McCusker; and Dog in the Fog with Dezi Donnelly.

“It is creative people like Mick who have contributed to the wonderful reputation that Ireland enjoys for the quality of its art and culture, allowing the rest of us to walk with pride in this reflected glory.”—President Michael D. Higgins

Mick Moloney—ethnomusicologist, musician, and professor—has stood at the forefront of Irish American tradition for decades, earning an NEA National Heritage fellowship, Presidential Distinguished Service Award and the Gradam Ceoil Lifetime Achievement along the way.

“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

“[O’Farrill’s] music bursts with vital purpose … extraordinary."—New York Times

Six-time Grammy-winning pianist, composer, and educator Arturo O’Farrill is a pioneer in the Afro-Latin jazz space. He has performed and collaborated with top artists and arts organizations including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, Harry Belafonte, Ballet Hispánico, Malpaso Dance Company, Alvin Ailey, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Apollo, as well as with his own Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Boss Level Sextet. O’Farrill founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music.

“These stories needed to be told. We, as migrants are used to being spoken for, yet these are our experiences.”—Okorie in the New York Times

Melatu Uche Okorie is an author and member of the Arts Council of Ireland. Her 2018 short story collection, This Hostel Life, was shortlisted for the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year Award at the Irish Book Awards, and adapted into an operatic work by the Irish National Opera.

“[In dance,] your colour, race, gender, ethnicity, background did not matter. The dance community was accepting of everyone. As a kid it was a haven.”—Tobi Omoteso, in the Irish Times, on growing up Black in Ireland

Tobi Omoteso is a Nigerian-Irish b-boy and hip-hop freestyle dancer, choreographer, and educator. As a dance facilitator, Tobi has designed and facilitated youth programs for Dance Ireland, Dublin Dance Festival, Waterford Youth Art, Laois Dance Platform, Take A Part Carlow, and Dance Limerick. He has performed his own work at the Imagine Arts Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Limerick Fringe Festival, What’s Next Festival, Laois Dance Platform, Glor Performance Platform, Dance2Connect, Dance Ireland’s Dance Talks, and many other festivals and events.

Tobi is curator and director of the hugely popular Top 8 Street Dance Battle at Dublin Dance Festival, which delivers the best of Irish and International street dance to new audiences. His television appearances include Sky’s Got to Dance, the US television series Penny Dreadful, and numerous music videos and commercials. He has worked with some of Ireland’s leading choreographers, including David Bolger, John Scott, Catherine Young, Libby Steward, David Francis Moore, and Lucia Kickham.

“A treasured sideman steps to the light.”—The Advocate, on the release of Powell’s new album

Dirk Powell is a musician with deep roots in several rural American traditions. He learned banjo and fiddle from his Kentucky grandfather, James Clarence Hay, and has been a part of the thriving Cajun/Creole music community in Louisiana since his early 20s. He has toured and recorded with musicians including Eric Clapton, Joan Baez, Buddy Miller, Jack White, Loretta Lynn and Levon Helm, and worked in film with directors Anthony Minghella (Cold Mountain), Ang Lee (Ride with the Devil), and Spike Lee (Bamboozled). He has released solo albums, and owns his own production studio on the banks of Bayou Teche near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. His latest recording, When I Wait For You, was released in September 2020.

Photo credit: David McClister

“Dance captures the body; its patterns, movements, expressions and energies. A person can say a thing but if their body isn't behind it, it doesn't have any weight or conviction.”—Liz Roche on RTÉ

Liz Roche is artistic director and choreographer of Liz Roche Company. The company has produced and toured her dance works throughout Ireland and internationally at venues and festivals including the Baryshnikov Arts Centre, South Bank Centre London, Meet in Beijing Festival, and Powerhouse Brisbane. In 2015 the company premiered Bastard Amber, commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin Dance Festival, and Kilkenny Arts Festival, the first time an Irish choreographer was commissioned to create a full length dance work for the main stage of Ireland’s national theatre.

Recent commissions include: I/Thou for Cork Opera House and Sirius Arts Centre; The Here Trio, a cross-border commission for Maiden Voyage Belfast; and Totems, a site specific work for the National Gallery of Ireland. Having recently completed a three-year residency at Dublin Dance Festival, the company is currently in residence at the Irish World Academy at University of Limerick.

Liz has also choreographed extensively in theatre and opera for the Abbey and Gate Theatres, Landmark Productions, the Lyric Theatre Belfast, Irish National Opera, Wexford Festival Opera, Rossini Festival Pesaro, Opernhaus Zurich, National Opera of Korea, and Liceu Barcelona.

Photo credit: Alan Gilsenan

“[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.

"One of the most dazzling wordsmiths of contemporary theatre."—The Guardian

Enda Walsh is a Tony and BAFTA award-winning playwright and screenwriter (Once on Broadway/West End, Hunger) renowned for his career-long work with Galway International Arts Festival, including the 2017 GIAF and IAC co-presentation of the installation Rooms.