About Quiet Music Ensemble
“Music as microclimate, in a constant state of becoming, floating around the edges of form, occasionally on the threshold of audition, shifting subtly, flowering, wilting, swelling, ebbing. All performed with consummate grace and sensitivity.”
Quiet Music Ensemble is based in Ireland and is dedicated to improvised and Experimental Music. It draws its repertoire from diverse artistic sources, including composers of music, sound artists and visual artists. It performs in unconventional spaces and contexts. QME is dedicated to equality - social, experiential and environmental - and to the proposition that true art arises through communal discovery and thoughtful introspection.
QME’s music is still, poised, filigree; with the silence of rapt attention and a deep respect for the sonic environment of our world; it is about sound woven amongst the multiplicity of human senses and the abundant inner creativity it inspires. Through in-the-moment interaction with environmental sound and field recordings, visual arts, live electronics and philosophical thought, QME creates living soundscapes, kaleidoscopic, liminal, “delicately ambiguous, and entirely compelling” (Journal of Music, 2023).
“the very notion of ‘quiet music’ is something of a revolutionary act…a mesmeric power”
Amongst others, QME has performed at Quiet Music Festival, New Music Dublin, Cork Midsummer and Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Deep Minimalism Festival, UK; Poznan Music Spring and Sacrum Profanum Festival, Poland; DAADgalerie, Berlin; Interpretations series (Roulette, New York) and Other Minds (San Francisco).
QME has commissioned works from world-renowned composers including Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, David Toop, Michael Pisaro, Jennifer Walshe, Karen Power, Mark Applebaum, Christopher Fox, Martin Iddon, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and Kathy Hinde. It has also commissioned work from outstanding Irish composers and artists including sound artist Danny McCarthy and is committed to working with early-career artists as a major part of its activities.