PRESS

“It's a piece of startling freshness, with Ó Lionáird's voice at the centre of a seething web of instrumental lines that seems to commute freely between utterly different musical worlds without any trace of dislocation.” Continue Reading

"Arrestingly beautiful”

"Then a trapdoor opens. The Dowlandesque dissonances thicken further into dense, microtonal chords, creating from the uncanny pure tone of the viol consort vivid, intense new colors: harmonies suggest at once the iridescence and the taste of an old copper pot, or both the rainbow halation of a streetlamp on a misty night and the buzz of its sodium bulb. The effect was hypnotic, and the piece, a single 38-minute movement, could have gone on forever and felt like a moment."

"The Hunger features an eerily spectral, hollowed-out soundscape consisting of convulsive microtonal pulsing in woodwind and brass against uneasy shifting microtonal oscillations, disembodied harmonics and skeletal ponticello in strings… A haunting, illuminating, harrowing, yet subtly gripping work.”

"The Last Hotel unleashes a thrilling musical energy. Dennehy's 12-piece ensemble includes accordion, electric guitar and heavy percussion, and thrums with a savage, unstoppable groove, shouting the unspeakable, seething with emotions that characters are too numb to express."

"From the exhilarating score, lyrical singing, and dazzingly intricate design, this is a work that needs to be seen more than once in order to absorb the rich detail. Like its recurring filmed image of a murmuration of starlings, it soars."

“Donnacha Dennehy has a soundworld all of his own.”