Bitter suite memories: How a Cork composer's music was inspired by the burning of his hometown
Paul Frost with his partner Mia Cooper and their kids Joanie and Íde. Picture: Ruth Medjber
With his orchestral suite, The Burning of Cork, Paul Frost wants you to close your eyes and imagine you are there on that night on December 11, 1920. The broadcast of his piece on Lyric FM on Friday takes place exactly 100 years after a night of terror in Cork city when Crown forces burned and looted many of Cork city’s businesses, and left some of its finest building in ruins.
From Inniscarra, Frost comes to composition from the perspective of an insider with a career spanning two decades as a bass-trombone player and a prolific arranger for orchestras and big bands, covering a broad range from pop to jazz to classical.
The Frost family are well-known in music circles. His mother Catherine Janeczek-Frost was former head of music at Colaiste Choilm in Ballincollig. His father plays double bass. Three sisters are all professional musicians - Sinead plays bassoon, Catriona is a percussionist and Deirdre, a double bass player forging a new career as a fine artist.
Back in 2007, Frost was in Southampton playing for a show when he picked up a Christmas present that introduced him to events that were the spur for a creative response more a decade later.
“I was sitting in the pit, reading this book, The Burning of Cork by Gerry White and Brendan O’Shea. Living away from Cork for a few years, and knowing all the places, I could visualise the sheer drama of the events. I was surprised. Although, I was in my twenties, I was unaware of the trauma that my home city had gone through on the night of Dec 11th in 1920.”
The germ of an idea for a musical response lay dormant until like everybody in the arts in 2020, Frost had time on his hands.
Frost wrote the title theme which became the fifth movement a couple of years ago. “The Burning of Cork’ is a lyrical movement intended as a tribute to the bravery of the firefighters and the Delany brothers who were shot in their homes that night.”
It features a virtuosic violin part played by Frost’s partner, Mia Cooper, who leads the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. “It is brilliant to have Mia there leading and I can talk plainly to her about the articulation and expression that I want.”
A positive response to a demo posted on YouTube prompted Frost to get a move on with the other movements.
The tension builds in the opening three movements including titles ‘Martial Law’ and 'Dillon’s Cross’ to the big central movement titled ‘Hell Was Let Loose on the City’ which he describes as “heavy, brutal and tuneless”.
Having percussion expertise in the family came in useful for some of the special effects heard in the score. Frost enthuses about thunder sheets, shimmering off-stage cymbals and reveals some of the secrets. “If you hit a stick on the middle and the rim of a snare drum at the same time you get a really loud bang like the sound of gunshot.” The delightfully low-tech fire crackle effect is revealed to be “bubble wrap filched from the librarian’s office”. A calmer final movement features a solo for pianist Gary Beecher.
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra under English conductor David Young recorded the Suite in October. “It was an interesting project, due to the necessity of social distancing. It was recorded over three days using a click-track and then layering on each section of the orchestra. It was my debut as producer and immensely satisfying to see through a project in these strange times.”
