Talk: Echoes from the Little Stream of Death Wednesday, (in Chicago April 15 7:00-8:30 p.m.)

DePaul Students visit Glaisín Na Marbh in 2013

Glaisín Na Marbh (Little Stream of Death, in translation) is a now deserted town-land in a remote corner of Killarney National Park, Ireland.  Several families died there during the Great Famine of the 1840s. 

The surrounding landscape is beautiful: bog stretches away from the lazy beds where once the potatoes were grown; the oak woodlands encroach from the other sides. I recently proposed establishing a long-term recording station to monitor this wild landscape. However, an email exchange with an old friend halted the project.  In this presentation I reflect on why my friend’s arguments, on the ethics of sound recording, were so convincing.  

The only recording of Glaisín Na Marbh  that we can agree upon is in the form of a song, Cold is the Night, that I wrote with two noted Chicago-based Irish musicians, Kathleen Keane and James Conway. Kathleen and James will perform the piece.

I will present on DePaul Humanities Center: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 at an event called The Sound and the Sample

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An evening of three radically different live performances and analysis of what it means to take a sound from its original context and repurpose it, giving it new meaning elsewhere.

Wednesday, April 15

7:00-8:30 p.m.

Cortelyou Commons

2324 N. Fremont St.

Chicago, IL 60614

Kathleen Keane and James Conway perform an original piece of music for which I wrote the lyric Cold The Night. 

The venue is awesome - the acoustic should be grand.