In its 13th edition, this year is the first that Ireland has participated in the Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, and my group, lord altmont, were lucky enough to have been one of the two acts chosen by Music Network to represent the country. Thanks to the kind support of Culture Ireland, we had the opportunity to spend 10 days in the south of Italy absorbing an abundance of art and showing attendants what Ireland has to offer.

During the 10 days of the event, there were musical, theatre and dance performances by young artists organised every day, there was a permanent exhibition space set up where painters, sculptors, photographers, fashion designers and visual artists displayed their work, writers read and performed samples from their literature, there were film screenings and there were workshops in the various areas covered by the festival. The most incredible thing about this event, however, was that every artist was present for the entire duration of the festival, so meeting someone whose work you enjoyed was easy. In all there were 863 artists represented and the diversity of the people was clear in the art on display.

Our performance consisted of vocal and percussion arrangements of a number of my compositions accompanied with dance. We sang in English, Irish, French, Hebrew and a hybrid language, which I invented. After the performance we were called back to the stage by the audience and performed a sean-nos song from Connemara. The crowd, most of whom were from the Mediterranean and mainland Europe, were singing along with us in Irish! The rest of the week evolved in a similar fashion with many of the performing musicians sitting together by the fountain with their instruments sharing songs from their respective countries and creating new music together.

This festival has been one of the most important growing opportunities which I have experienced in my twelve years as a performing musician.

written by aidan
www.floatinghome.org
www.myspace.com/lordaltmont