Culture Night: Unique arts event grounded in place

Restoring Cavan’s Boglands will reach a dramatic climax this Culture Night 2024 with a classical music concert in Belturbet.

The piece has been composed by lead artist Ian Wilson, originally from the North, but who has been living in Cavan for some time. This year long project has focused on bogland and the benefits of bogland restoration for sequestering carbon and improving biodiversity habitats.

‘We have no Prairies’ is a 40 minute contemporary classical music performance for contrabass flute, contra-alto clarinet and soundtrack.

“My role was to compose a piece of music that would somehow reflect the nature and aims of the project, and so I began by making a number of field recordings in different types of bogland, both drained and restored, so I could hear the characters of both and compare them,” explains Wilson.

“Water, birdsong and insect life were all important sonic elements, and the times of year I made the various recordings were also a factor. I then produced a soundtrack comprised of edited and processed field recordings which became the basis for the new work, then composed music for two wonderfully low wind instruments: Lina Andonovska’s contrabass flute and Cathal Roche’s contra-alto clarinet. Lina and Cathal are both wonderful musicians I have worked with often.”

‘We have no Prairies’- also the first line of Seamus Heaney’s beautiful poem ‘Bogland’- combines substantial sections of composed music with occasional improvised passages and interlude-type soundtrack-only passages. “Its trajectory follows a ‘back-to-life’ type narrative, sonically speaking,” suggests Wilson.

The free event will take place at Belturbet Railway Station on Friday, September 20, at 8.30pm. Visitors can also visit a wonderful exhibition of work by Cavan ceramic artist Eimear Crowe at the Good Store Belturbet from 6pm.