The series Creative Evolutions takes place in autumn 2024 in TGR The Green Room in Cologne, an organisation dedicated to supporting performing artists’ health and wellbeing.
The events will feature world-renowned Irish artists Ian Wilson (composer) and Carol McGonnell (clarinet) and others, who will explore through their works and during podium discussions aspects of innovative artistic evolutions, while addressing sensitive topics like health impairments and artistic crises.
Ian Wilson, a leading Irish composer, has written several works on the themes of health and physical or mental impairments, including a piece for a vocalist who lost the ability to sing, and a concert for residents at the Charlie O’Toole Day Hospital in Adelaide, Meath. For this series, Ian’s work Voces Amissae (Lost Voices) for soprano and ensemble will be performed.
These events are curated by acclaimed Irish clarinetist, Carol McGonnell, who herself experienced devastating hearing loss which threatened to end her career. Through painstaking re-evaluations of her ways of approaching her art, and through a full commitment to healing practices, McGonnell was able to recover from an illness that medical practitioners had declared incurable. This experience led McGonnell to speak openly about, and advocate for, performing artists‘ health and wellbeing.
More informationTGR The Green Room is a non-profit social enterprise founded in 2020 by the American pianist and psychologist, Heather O’Donnell, for the comprehensive support of performing artists (especially musicians, dancers, and theatre professionals) in the areas of performance research, somatic training, psychosocial care, and artistic performance coaching. Since 2022, TGR has been offering various types of residencies, initially for artists fleeing the war in Ukraine and now to a broader spectrum of international artists. TGR has been selected for a patronage by the German Commission for UNESCO, and has partnered with several organisations such as the Goethe Institut, Artists-at-Risk (Finland), and the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
Hailed as “an extraordinary clarinetist” by the New York Times, “elastic, exacting, stupendous” by the LA Times, and “clarinet genius” by Time Out NY, Dublin-born clarinetist Carol McGonnell is known for the expressive power of her playing of standard repertoire while also enjoying acclaim for her fearless exploration of cutting-edge developments in new music. Carol has appeared in the inaugural concert of Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and in Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series, has performed as soloist in both John Adam’s In Your Ear Festival at Carnegie and in LA’s Monday Evening Concerts. Carol is artistic director of Music for Museums, in association with the National Gallery of Ireland, and involving Museums such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, J.P. Getty in LA and the Metropolitan Museum in NYC.
Ian Wilson was born in Belfast and has since written over 200 works, including operas, concertos, 20 string quartets, a range of orchestral and chamber music and multi-media pieces. His compositions have been performed and broadcast on six continents and presented at festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale and Frankfurt Bookfair and at venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. In 1998 he was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s State-funded body of creative artists.