Thursday, July 14, 2011
NEW YORK’S Carnegie Hall, London’s Barbican, and the Cork Opera House are all celebrating the 75th birthday of Steve Reich, the great American composer.
Eight months in as chief executive of the Opera House, Mary Hickson has no qualms about placing Cork in such exalted company. "Why can’t it be Cork?" she says. "Why does it always have to be ‘they do it better over there’?"
Hickson, who pulled pints at the Opera House while studying at UCC, feels that. "being from Cork, and being in this position, makes it important to get it right — to do right by it. I get how much this place means to people in Cork, it puts an added pressure on me. But I think I understand more how to engage with people, and we will be trying to celebrate more Cork stuff and get Cork people involved," she says.
Reich’s 70th birthday, in 2006, was celebrated during RTÉ’s Living Music Festival with a survey of his music.
Now, with The Reich Effect, a five-day festival beginning on July 27, the Opera House will show audiences the influence Reich has had on pop music, minimalist music, electronica, rock music and rap. Reich sees himself as bridging an artificial gap between art music and pop music.
Hickson is re-energising the Opera House, which she took over after a period of closure and money difficulties.
She is aware of the challenges, but praises the city for a grant of €250,000 and the Arts Council for maintaining the Opera House’s funding.
"I think the Opera House had faded from people’s minds. When I came back to Cork, I didn’t come in to the Opera House and few of my friends did. I think it had some really good, positive years and it tried to repeat what was going on. The place had a strong audience, but it stayed with them and missed out on an audience coming up," she says.
Hickson will not exclude any art forms from the Opera House — it will remain a venue for comedy, drama and gigs — but is "trying to nurture a new audience," she says.
As a founder of Dun Laoghaire’s Festival of World Cultures, she is used to inclusive programming. She cites February’s concert by Duke Special and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, with Mary Coughlan, and Mary-Kate Geraghty from Fight Like Apes.
"That’s like four audiences in one room," she says. "And each walked out commenting on the thing they didn’t come to see. It was lovely to hear that in the foyer — and that then cultivates a greater mass of people who will take a chance on stuff."
The Cork audience is notorious for only taking a chance in certain circumstances. It will go off site to see anything, but not into a theatre; it will do experimental, but only during a festival. Hickson says this is a reason to be optimistic.
"That’s the fault of the venues. The audience have been nurtured into thinking that you only get the unusual stuff during the Midsummer Festival. But why can’t we have it at other points during the year? It’s not fair to have that weight of expectation on the festival all the time, and I do see it as part of my role to change all that."
Hickson is mobilising the Opera House brand, bringing it off-site, to draw audiences back into the stalls.
It’s working: tickets for this month’s gigs with Lisa Hannigan, Duke Special, James Vincent McMorrow and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, in Mitchelstown Caves, sold out instantly.
For The Reich Effect, says Hickson, the Opera House is "taking over the city," with gigs at the Triskel, the Firkin Crane, the Pavilion, the Savoy and City Hall.
Corcadorca, Cork’s leading theatre company, and known for rarely being in a theatre, will, incredibly, be staging its first show in the Opera House, A Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare.
"The attitude some people have had to us running Shakespeare in the Opera House for two weeks was that it’s way too ambitious, but why can’t we do it? They do it in Galway, the Abbey does it. Why can’t we believe enough in what we are doing?
"Equally, with The Reich Effect, we are taking a risk, but I’d stand over it 100%. There’s not one dud event in the programme. It’s all about getting people in Cork to trust us, and to take a chance," Hickson says.
The Reich Effect Panel As Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore said, Steve Reich is a kind of rock’n’roller, whether he knows it or not, and The Reich Effect sets out to prove just that, showcasing Efterklang (Savoy, July 30, 10pm), the Crash Ensemble (Opera House, July 31, 8pm), the Kronos Quartet (Opera House, July 28, 8pm) and Jóhann Jóhannsson (Triskel, July 31, 8pm) among artists who readily attest to the guiding hand of Reich on their work.
Reich himself will be in Cork for a public interview by RTE’s John Kelly (Opera House, July 27, 6pm); the London Sinfonietta will play his iconic Music for 18 Musicians (Opera House, July 30, 8pm) and, among gigs spread across the city, there will be a Remix Club (the Pavilion, July 29, 10pm) where the winning entry to a public competition to remix Reich’s Drumming will be performed.
It worked for the Orb with Pink Fluffy Clouds, which was based on his Electric Counterpoint – now another budding musician has a chance to get Reich’s own imprimatur – the composer will be picking the winner.
Another date for the diary is Kaleidoscope (Half Moon Theatre, July 28, 10pm). Kate Ellis, the Opera House’s musician in residence, counts Steve Reich among her biggest fans.
Together with Cliodhna Ryan, she will be turning the tables with an evening of music that has had an effect on Reich, with Donal Dineen hitting the decks afterwards.
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra will explore The Reich Effect at work through the music of composers Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Ros and Nico Muhly (City Hall, July 29, 8pm).
The festival’s opening concert is Counterpoint (Firkin Crane, July 28, 6pm) a performance of Reich’s four pieces in that style (using a live instrument and a tape recording).
Some of his other signature styles will be explored in the Drumming concert (Opera House, July 29, 6pm) and Phases (Firkin Crane, July 30, 6pm).
* For full listings and booking: corkoperahouse.ie, or reicheffect.tumblr.com
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