Master of Music Sheehan Hugh

Artistic work as a musician

Taiteellinen työ / siihen pohjautuva työ | Kaksivuotinen

During the grant period I work as a musician (multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer). The projects are: 1) Gratitude: a two-movement evening-length interdisciplinary folk opera. Partly inspired by Garth Greenwell's Cleanness, this work will be written for an ensemble directed by me, made up of musicians based in Finland, UK and Ireland. It will take ownership of my experiences as a queer person, once a site of such conflict and shame, and weave them into lyrics, into melody and harmony, into pure sonority: a sacred process, the ultimate act of defiance. 2) Maija Kauhanen + Hugh Sheehan: creation and performance of 3 concerts. The duo uses kantele and electronics and other extra-musical objects to explore the internal characteristics of sound, the minutiae, the slowly developing intricacies of a performance. The project explores symmetry, parity and equality. 3) Choral Suite for Hämäläis-Osakunnan Laulajat. The work is based upon the Irish sean-nós (old style) singing tradition. I am enamoured of exploring how two quite disparate musical worlds (choral and Irish traditional) can intertwine, inform one another, and in doing so synthesise new forms of music, expression, creation. 4) Sheehan & Grey – arranging, recording and performance of new work. This duo's music ranges from centuries-old folk melodies to self-penned tunes that arise from late-night, spontaneous, improvisation. We focus on the intricacy and intimacy of the duo form, exploring the myriad combined qualities of reed and string. My practice embodies a multiplicity; it is wholly indebted to hybridisation, to cross-genre pollination and taking the frameworks of one music and applying them to another. Furthermore, in recent years, my work has been deeply informed by queer and feminist texts. Thus, these projects will be situated at the locus of productive collision, the point at which line-crossing, conflict, and contradiction is likely, even inevitable.