Joyful Joyful with Catherine Crowe

Come and enjoy a unique combination of new and old sounds as Catherine Crowe,  a traditional Irish Sean Nos Singer, brings her particular Old Style singing and sound to our stage.  Joyful, Joyful will bring us into a contemporary soundscape built on and embellished by these traditions.

This evening will be eclectic and electric and a must-see for those who love the adventure of new and old sounds.

Projections by Joel Elliot.

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Joyful Joyful are a Peterborough/Toronto-based duo creating strange and beautiful soundscapes. Long-listed for the 2022 Polaris Music Prize, their music draws on traditional, sacred, and experimental music, creating a singular sound unlike anything else. Their performances are unsettling, humane, and hopeful. A thicket of cables and effects transforms a single, visceral voice into a shimmering and otherworldly chorus, making Joyful Joyful’s dense drone-hymns at once sorrowful, soaring, and deeply moving.

Catherine Crowe has spent the past 40 years investigating a very particular kind of traditional music from Ireland called sean-nos. This simply means “old style” and refers to a kind of singing that developed around hearths in peoples' homes under the shadow of the Penal Laws. It is always unaccompanied, and often highly ornamented, and much of it is in the Irish language, but there is a considerable repertoire in English also. Catherine will sing some examples of this style of music in English, and talk about its historical context.