Lunchtime Concert: Hermit Songs (Barber) & Watershed (Ailís Ní Ríain)

Watershed is a new song cycle for voice and piano inspired by the natural bodies of water and land in Ireland’s midwest region and along the Atlantic coast. With music by renowned Irish composer Ailís Ní Ríain and text by Killaloe resident and poet Jessica Brown, it is a song cycle inextricably rooted in place and in nature. Central to the song-texts—which are taken from Jessica’s wonderful collection, And Say (Revival Press, Limerick 2019)—are themes informed by the writer’s personal interaction with water and the surrounding landscapes in counties Clare and Tipperary, including many areas along Lough Derg. Musicians Julie Comparini and Yonit Kosovske perform this new work as part of a contemporary Art Song programme titled Lough Derg 1 & 2, in which they present two song cycles: Ailís Ní Ríain’s Watershed (2020) alongside Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs (1953) composed on texts by medieval monks and poets writing about Lough Derg in Donegal. The Watershed song cycle was commissioned by Yonit with generous funding from the Arts Council Music Commissions Award in 2020.

Julie Comparini, contralto

Yonit Kosovske, piano

HERMIT SONGS by Samuel Barber (1910–1981)

At Saint Patrick's Purgatory Church Bell at Night St. Ita's Vision The Heavenly Banquet The Crucifixion Sea Snatch Promiscuity The Monk and His Cat The Praises of God The Desire for Hermitage

WATERSHED

by Ailís Ní Ríain (b.1974)

Walk

Fanore in June

My Anger:

Below the Reservoir

Evensong in Winter