Performed by Bill Dowdall

Lutheran Hall, Dublin

26 February 2018

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Bass Flute Master Class or “‘Set Fire to the Rain - Bass Flute Cover’ Cover(s)”’ by Darragh Kelly is a piece which makes extensive use of video, as well as having the performer speak directly to the audience in the manner of a lecture. The video variously consisted of a person playing the tune of Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ on bass flute (which the performer periodically paused to pass comment and suggest improvements), auditions from a Thai X Factor style television show and footage of a competitive figure skater (both of which featured use of the same Adele song). During the video of the reality show and the figure skater, the performer sometimes played along to the Adele, sometimes provided an accompanying countermelody and sometimes played directly against it.

 

This is a piece which knows that it is a piece of music; it is also a piece of theatre whose central character is the same person as its performer; it is also an examination of the universal appeal and globalising effect of popular music; and also, again, it is a commentary on the medium of video. It is all of these at once and yet it is none of them at once, as each constantly subverts and undermines another, only to be subverted and undermined itself in turn.

- Luke Smyth, Trinity News

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Bill Dowdall imparts bass flute wisdom, gained from years of experience with that most majestic and curious of instruments

 

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"a fold is always folded within a fold, like a cavern in a cavern

 

Deleuze, on Leibniz’s ontology of the baroque subject

 

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the superfold is the fold

sur le dehors

a fold that now incorporates the outside

 

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The computer, specifically digital media, saturates the work at every level: research, the work’s conceptual content, supporting performance notes, AV content, acoustic developing variation of AV material, the work’s intended dissemination...