Ormston House presents Gleo, a series of concerts of ambient and experimental music from November 2-5

Gleo – pictured above are Amanda Feery, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (top) and Colm Keady-Tabbal, and Michael Lightborne (bottom)

Gleo features a mix of Irish musicians, artists, composers, and broadcasters presenting a spectrum of musical practices and experiments in sound

Ormston House presents Gleo, a series of concerts of ambient and experimental music from 2–5 November.

Gleo* features a mix of Irish musicians, artists, composers, and broadcasters presenting a spectrum of musical practices and experiments in sound. Set between autumn and winter, as evenings darken, air cools, and life moves indoors, the concert series creates space to gather and listen together amid the changing seasons.

*A word originating from the west coast of Ireland, Gleo refers to the sound of the sea when it is loud and ominous, its tumult and texture akin to man-made or mechanical noise, a sound that foretells bad weather.

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Tickets are €25 or €12 per event, available from eventbrite.com. The event on Sunday, 5 November is free.

Thursday, 2 November, 9pm – Michael Lightborne presents Water Damage

Water Damage is an audio-visual trip through the Blackwater valley, exploring the deep entanglement of Irish rivers with agriculture and politics, places and people, health and life, myth and memory.

Water Damage incorporates visual elements that combine archival images from agricultural journals of the mid-twentieth century with the waters and sticky material of the Blackwater valley itself. Phosphate, nitrogen, slurry, petrol, ink, leaves, seeds and dirt drift in and out of the stream of images, while the willfully stupid technique of ‘image composting’ is employed to examine how maps of these lands are made and unmade.

Friday, 3 November, 9pm – Amanda Feery presents we could be diving for pearls & Colm Keady-Tabbal (double bill)

we could be diving for pearls is a hymn to the worker, scored for vocal ensemble and live electronics, with text by Declan Synnott.

The piece takes the hymn ‘Gresford’ by Robert Saint as a starting point. This hymn was written in 1936 to commemorate the Gresford miners of North Wales following a fatal mining disaster. Whilst ‘Gresford’ is a workers’ memorial for an historical event, we could be diving for pearls explores the idea of worker precarity, breaches of safety, and the feeling of being locked into an economic system of supply and demand in the present day.

Colm Keady-Tabaal will presenta new composition for electronics drawing on their studies of microtonality and historical tuning systems. The piece will explore intonation, temporality and harmonic perception.

Saturday, 4 November, 9pm – Caoimhín Ó’Raghallaigh

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh is a fiddle player widely known through his collaborations with groups like The Gloaming and This is How we Fly and through duos with Dan Trueman, Thomas Bartlett, Garth Knox, Mick O’Brien, and Brendan Begley.

As a solo artist, his output ranges from quite traditional to the fairly ‘out there’. Making music on a ten-string fiddle called the hardanger d’amore, he explores the region where traditional music begins to disintegrate.

Sunday, 5 November, 6.30–9.30pm – RTÉ Lyric FM’s Ambient Orbit  (Free event)

Ambient Orbit is a non-presenter-led programme on RTÉ Lyric FM produced by Peter Curtin and Áine Gallagher. The show occupies a unique space in Irish radio, crafting a mix of ambient sounds and field recordings from the Irish landscape, airing from midnight every Sunday.

For Gleo, audiences can join us for a recording of the show with live performances from Alan Massey and Louise Gaffney. Attendees are welcome to bring along blankets, yoga mats, and cushions and settle into an evening of droning ambient sounds, field recordings, and musical performances.

Gleo is curated by Caimin Walsh of Ormston House and Jack Brolly. It is supported by the Night-Time Economy After Hours at the Museum scheme and Limerick City and County Council.

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