In partnership with the Embassies of Ireland in Paris and Brussels
Pomes Penyeach
as part of the Festival Quartier du Livre
With Matthew Nolan (guitar), Adrian Crowley (piano & mellotron), Sean Mac Erlaine (reeds & electronics), Cora Venus Lunny (violin & viola), Anna Mieke (voice) and Kevin Murphy (cello).
This innovative evening of music and song finds its genesis in James Joyce’s second and last book of poetry, Pomes Penyeach, published in 1927. A collection of 12 poems and a tilly – a baker’s dozen – the book sold for one shilling (12 pennies) or 12 francs, so the poems were a penny each. Pomes is also a pun on pommes (the French for apple) as Joyce wanted the cover of the book to be the colour of his favourite apple, the Calville.
For this project, Dublin-based composer and curator Matthew Nolan enlisted the help of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and composer Adrian Crowley to decipher this elegiac collection. An astonishing world began to unfurl around a uniquely Joycean affinity between language and music. Join some of Ireland’s finest contemporary musicians on a journey to comprehend love and life from the map left by Joyce’s pen.
