With Ceara Conway, Matthew Nolan and Lisa Dowdall
Where: FYLKINGEN, Saltmätargatan 2, 111 60 Stockholm (ABF Huset)
When: Wednesday, November 18, 19.00
Price: 180 sek
Member Price: 150 sek
Purchase your ticket here
Program
18.30 The doors open
19.00 Opening act with Johnny Heartbreaker / Ewert Ekros
20.00 INCANT with Ceara Conway, Lisa Dowdall and Matthew Nolan
We are absolutely delighted to be bringing INCANT to Fylkingen in Stockholm this November.
INCANT is a live performance featuring Irish artist Ceara Conway’s newly composed contemporary vocal works, Grief Spell and Dátheangach. These pieces are presented within a song cycle of traditional folk songs and poems that explore themes of language, loss, and the environment. For this performance, Conway will be joined by acclaimed musicians Matthew Nolan (electric guitar and synth) and Lisa Dowdall (violin/viola d’amore, Crash Ensemble).
Alongside her contemporary vocal work, Ceara’s debut album CAOIN (Independently released) in 2021 announced her arrival as an emerging singer on the folk scene in Ireland today. Earning a nomination from the RTE Folk Awards for best track, the album received soaring praise.
‘’Her respect for tradition, her embrace of innovation, all mark her out as a unique portal in intersectional cross-disciplinary art practice in this country at the moment.’’ – Alice Maher
”Conway provides heartfelt interpretations throughout, adroitly pitched vocals matched by delicate, poetically evocative accompaniments. Sung entirely in Irish, CAOIN pitches Ceara Conway at the forefront of a new generation of sean nós singers.” **** – Songlines Magazine
”Conway has a strong, pitch-perfect and distinctive mezzo-soprano voice that deals well with the vocal ornamentation typical of sean nós without losing sight of the central melodies” – Living Tradition
Musicians: Ceara Conway, Matthew Nolan and Lisa Dowdall
Projectionist: Ellen Culloo
Production team: Ewert Ekros and Andreas Hedenmark
This concert is supported by Culture Ireland as part of the EU Council presidency programme and paired with LANDLINES, an exhibition at Galler Duerr featuring seven Interface Inagh artists.
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Lisa Dowdall
An innovative and versatile musician, Lisa Dowdall has focused her career on chamber music in all its forms from early music through classical to hardcore contemporary, exploring new musical genres, art forms and performance spaces. Lisa has performed as a chamber musician, recitalist, and in chamber orchestras throughout Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and Asia. She has performed at The Edinburgh Festival, BBC Proms, Canberra International Music Festival, Ban on a Can Marathon, with residencies at Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival, Princeton University, Montclair State University and Aldeburgh Residencies. Performance highlights include performances in Carnegie Hall (USA), Kennedy Centre (USA), Barbican (UK) as well as live radio broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, Lyric FM, ABC and WNYC. Since 2007, Lisa has been a member of the internationally acclaimed new music group Crash Ensemble, collaborating with composers and artists across genres and disciplines. With the ensemble, she has premiered works by Terry Riley, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Nico Muhly and Donnacha Dennehy. Crash Ensemble's recordings feature on labels including NMC, Cantaloupe, Nonesuch and Bedroom Community. Lisa’s passion for authentic performance has led her to explore the world of the baroque viola and viola d’amore, performing and recording with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Camerata Kilkenny, Ensemble Marsyas, Spackling Band, Sestina and Resurgam. Through the viola d’amore, Lisa brings together her baroque and contemporary experiences, collaborating with composers, improvisers, poets, dancers, singer-songwriters and film scorers.
Ceara Conway
Ceara Conway (b. 1977) is an Irish artist from the Connemara Gaeltacht, currently based in Galway. Her work is self-reflexive, drawing on personal experience to engage with urgent contemporary challenges—including the loss of minority languages, climate change, and enduring patriarchal structures. She explores how these intersecting forces shape our sense of belonging and influence the connections we form with each other and with the natural, more -than-human- world. Working across music, song, texts (multilingual) and visual art (video and photography), she creates multimedia live performances and artworks for galleries, site-specific locations, music venues, and theatres. Her compositions (Irish and English) are informed by her research and interest in literary sources, including historical texts, academic writing, poetry, and non-fiction. Over the past fourteen years, a central thread throughout her practice has been the exploration of lament and both Irish and global keening practices. The performance tactics of this tradition, with its distinctive use of singing, recitation, and ritualised performance, continue to be an exploration in her work. She is interested in the potency found at the intersection of visual and vocal arts practice—a synergy deeply shaped by her contemporary practice and her upbringing within a tradition and context of song, recitation, and the Irish language.
Matthew Nolan
Matthew Nolan is a Dublin-based musician, music curator, and academic. He was the founder and artistic director of 3epkano from 2004 to 2015, an instrumental music ensemble specialising in the production of original music for movies from the silent era. Over the last 10 years, he has been involved in producing new music for several award-winning Irish films including Exile in Hell, Runners, and Somewhere Down the Line. He teaches Film Studies at Dublin Business School and Trinity College Dublin. Ongoing and current projects include Dracula and People on Sunday. Matthew has also worked on commissions from a range of performing arts institutions and arts organisations, including: The Audi Dublin International Film Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, National Gallery of Art, Cork and Dublin French Film Festivals, Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, Cork Midsummer Festival, Film Society at Lincoln Centre in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
