Braxton - Ghost Trance Music (Belfast, 2026)

Anthony Braxton - Ghost Trance Music

Sonorities Festival Belfast, 2026

Multiphonic Miniatures – Sarah Watts
Tesserae (a graphic score in G minor) – Ioana Petcu-Colan
Ghost Trance Music – Anthony Braxton

Queen's University, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast - 18th April 2026

"You Might Not Like It" is the disarming but refreshingly honest motto for Belfast's biennial Sonorities Festival of new and experimental music performances, panels and workshops, but for those of us 'in the know' or perhaps more accurately those of us who have some idea to expect the unexpected it's an opportunity to open your mind to the possibilities of what new and future music can be. You still might not always 'like' it but you will definitely hear music unlike anything you've heard before, often played on objects you've never thought of as musical instruments and, if open to the experience, you are likely to be impressed at the imaginative programming, the musicianship and the unique creativity of the works. I was only able to make it to one event this year, but all those elements were definitely on display in the programme of pieces for Ghost Trance Music.

The programme opened with a short solo piece by Sarah Watts, a familiar figure here as a member of the city's new music specialists the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble. The piece was advertised as 'Multiphonic Miniatures' but in a change of programme or perhaps as an alternative title Sarah Watts played her composition 'It's All I've Known', a piece written as a site specific work that was to be played on contrabass clarinet in the closed down disused cooling tower of the Nottinghamshire Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. Much more than being an experiment in acoustics, the piece is a response of a community to the closure of the station, a familiar landmark in the town, a place where many have worked for years, part of the whole fabric of the community.

Watts' resonant music evoked that deep connection between the place and the people, the sound engineer at the QUB Sonic Arts and Research Centre creating a surround-sound echoing reverb that somehow managed to replicate the sense of being in the building, while a projection of a series of photographs rising up the interior of the cooling tower were projected on a large screen behind the stage. The intent to place you within the music is ideally what every composer wants and this was as close to being there as possible, but the music itself was also just as effective in connecting to a place lost in time and memories, fitting in perfectly with the nature of programme's ghost trance music theme.

Ioana Petcu-Colan, first violinist and leader of the Ulster Orchestra and wonderful advocate for new music, found another new and original way to expand the scope of music and extend its outreach with a score that is unique in its compositional form with her composition 'Tesserae (a graphic score in G minor)'. I recall Brian Irvine (also on the stage later this afternoon) introducing the Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival audience to the wonders of the graphic score by getting members of the audience to scribble on a flip-chart and present it to his 12 piece orchestra to play. In 'Tesserae' Ioana Petcu-Colan took the graphic score to the level of multimedia artwork in five sections which she created and which was displayed just outside the hall. Incorporating pieces of broken cello strings and previously-played violin bow hair, the piece becomes the score, the blue representing G Minor, the rest open for three musicians from the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble - David McCann (cello), Aisling Agnew (flute), Sarah Watts (contrabass clarinet) - to interpret and play.

The idea of an artwork for a music score might sound a little random, experimental and abstract but musically, as played by the ensemble, it was expressive and accessible and came across beautifully as interpreted by the musicians. Normally working with a conventional score, although often with markings for extended techniques, this was a new kind of a challenge, requiring not improvisation exactly, but very much about interpreting and responding in the moment. I spoke to Ioana afterwards and she was delighted that the performed piece sounded almost exactly as she imagined, but the beauty of the score is that it is not fixed as conventional notes on a page and would be capable of sounding quite different with other musicians and instruments in another location entirely. As such there is no predetermined meaning that the score is meant to represent, it being rather an attempt to get across a musical idea on the part of the composer, incorporating objects that have actual musical and performance history, translating that through the installation and the musicians to speak to the listener. I found it wonderfully entrancing, which is presumably the intent of a programme based around Ghost Trance Music.

The challenges of musical interpretation take on another level of complexity entirely when presented with a graphic score by Anthony Braxton. Notionally a jazz composer and musician, Braxton's music is much more varied and defies any easy categorisation. Indeed, as Alexander Hawkins noted when he introduced the piece, Braxton never settles for doing the same style of music or work with a band of the same musicians for very long. His 'Ghost Trance Music' compositions, which comprise of around 150 pieces written between 1995 and 2006, must present a formidable challenge for any group of musicians to approach, combining traditional and graphic scores with space left within that for improvisation, interpretation and even inclusion of other pieces of his compositions.

That challenge is made just that little bit easier I imagine when you have eight musicians (and composers) of the highest level on the stage of the SARC, including several who have played regularly alongside Braxton. The Hard Rain SolistEnsemble with Ioana Petcu-Colan on violin were joined with Brian Irvine on electronics, Matthew Wright on turntable and live sampling, Alexander Hawkins on piano and Stephen Davis on drums. The 45-minute performance of 'Ghost Trance Music - Composition #245' is indeed intended to bring the listener into a trance-like state through its evolving and changing parts. It can sound chaotic when all eight musicians are playing together - or not so much chaotic as difficult to find a musical centre - but little modular sound groups of several musicians develop and expand on pulses and rhythms suggested by the graphic score and draw the listener in compellingly.

It's just as easy however to find yourself lost as get yourself lost in the composition, not always knowing where all the sounds were coming from in that "joyful commotion" as Sonorities prefer to describe the programming. Is that sound you're hearing electronics, turntable sampling, prepared piano, Alexander Hawkins's electronic box of tricks or that wind-up musical box that Aisling Agnew is holding to the microphone? to say nothing of the percussive sounds played on all the instruments - but the key is not to trying too hard to find a way in but instead let the music take you there. And essentially this is what this programme and the Sonorities Festival Belfast is all about, recommending that you to put aside preconceived ideas of what you think music should be and let the composer's music carve its own course via the musicians. You just need to open up and let it in.

Towards the end of the performance Alexander Hawkins scuttled across the stage with a sheet of music to give cues to Davis and Irvine to presumably include an unplanned concluding section. You expect experienced improvisational musicians like Hawkins, Davis, Wright and Irvine to be able to adapt to such a change but it was also taken up seemingly effortlessly by the experienced Hard Rain Ensemble musicians who, as practitioners of new and experimental contemporary music, never looked at all out of their comfort zone. It was around that point that I found that I was finally yielding to the ghost trance state just as the piece ended, or perhaps it's only when the music ends that you realise you've been there all along and probably even from the beginning of the whole programme.

External links: Sonorities Festival Belfast, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble

TERRAIN Festival of New Music (Belfast, 2024)

TERRAIN Festival of New Music

New Horizons Music, 2024

Ian Wilson, Liza Lim, Ivan Moody, Greg Caffrey, Jane O’Leary, Daniel Kessner, Ioana Petcu-Colan, Ashling Agnew, David McCann, Lina Andonovska, David Lyttle, Cathal Roche

The Accidental Theatre, Belfast - 18 May 2024

Although every pound in arts funding has to be fought for in the face of cuts and a cost of living crisis, we are fortunate in Northern Ireland to at least have tireless organisations promoting new, vital, experimental and cutting-edge new music. There are many important composers and rarely performed works of 20th century music that are rarely heard after their premiere, but it is important for the sake of musical progression and creativity to revisit these works and introduce them to a new public. The commission of original new works is just as important and fortunately, though initiatives north and south of the border, we also have a number of superb composers in Ireland, far more than we have outlets for their work to be heard.

Which is why it is important that composer and Artistic Director Ian Wilson has started another new music festival TERRAIN almost 10 years after the last the short-lived contemporary music festival TEMPERED was first presented over 4 days in 2015 and 2016 at the Crescent Arts Centre and a number of other venues. The inaugural one-day TERRAIN Festival of New Music might be a more modest proposal in scale, but in the range of music selected and the quality of performers gathered for three concerts at the Accidental Theatre in Belfast and with the support of the Arts Council NI, Moving on Music and the Contemporary Music Centre, there is ambition here that can surely be built upon 

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the earlier noon or afternoon concerts in the festival, missing the chance to hear some music from significant modern and contemporary composers that you will be hard pressed to see programmed elsewhere or even find recordings of much of their work. This included a great selection of pieces from such luminaries as Michael Finnissy, Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter, Liza Lim, Rebecca Saunders, Dai Fujikura, Kaija Saariaho as well as new works by Irish and local composers.

The musicians performing across the day are also among the best Ireland has to offer, each of them with a solid grounding and experience - and love for - contemporary music. Ioana Petcu-Colan is leader of the Ulster Orchestra, while flautist Ashling Agnew and cellist David McCann are local contemporary music specialists who have been regularly performing works by many of the above named composers in Belfast over the last decade as part of the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble. Australian flautist Lina Andonovska is a new name to me but has an impressive international profile, while David Lyttle and Cathal Roche are both familiar figures on the Irish jazz and improvised music scene.

The evening performance of inaugural TERRAIN Festival of New Music opened with three solo cello performances by David McCann. Far from being a low-key introduction to the evening's performances, McCann almost stole the show with a performance of Liza Lim's Invisibility, but before that he showed the variety and virtuosity of solo cello works with pieces by Ivan Moody and Greg Caffrey. "O tower wreathed in gold" by Ivan Moody, who died earlier this year at the age of only 59, might not be one of his liturgical works - Moody was also an Eastern Orthodox priest - but it felt like there was a spiritual element pervading this beautiful short piece, performed warmly without any religious solemnity. 

I'm familiar with Greg Caffrey's work, finding them enjoyable, full of ideas and interesting techniques and references, particularly his ensemble pieces composed as Artistic Director of the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble. As enjoyable as they are in the moment, they never seem to linger for me personally, and that was also the case with "Vigour, Rigour, Jigger". An intense piece in three short movements that require a lot of concentration, skill and technique - which McCann has plenty of - the first section signed-off unexpectedly by an impromptu car horn heard outside that seemed to fit with the fun tone of the work. It was a well-chosen piece that provided contrast and variety and complemented the other two works in this set.

Australian composer Liza Lim describes her exploratory solo cello piece "Invisibility" as one where "the cello also plays the musician". It's hard to imagine David McCann having anything but complete control of his cello in the drive, intensity and fluctuations of this remarkable piece, but there are indeed a number of invisible forces that produce unexpected results, Invisibility requiring not just the use of a regular bow, but a second bow with the hair wrapped around the wood. With its unusual tuning and scratchy complexities the sounds produced are extraordinary, as is the showmanship of playing the final segment with both bows simultaneously in both hands. I've heard this work before, but seeing it performed live is a revelation.

Which is what this is all about really. Live music performances give the audience an opportunity to really engage with the beauty and complexities of works that otherwise might seem formidable and inaccessible. It was just such an experience, as well as another example of thoughtful programming and musicianship, that made the violin and flute duos performed by Ioana Petcu-Colan violin and Aisling Agnew work so well together in performance. The two pieces by Irish-American and American composers at either end were contrasting but complementary, Jane O’Leary’s "A Winter Sketchbook" all icy fragility in the call and response interaction between flute and violin, while Daniel Kessner’s "Nuance" used a similar style, but with a warmer character with a hint of Appalachian bluegrass on the violin that perfectly rounded out this performance, the two separated by a short ethereal Toru Takemitsu piece originally composed for two flutes.

Another facet of new music that is often overlooked - which also requires specialised musicians - is improvised music. New music doesn't came any newer than being composed as it is performed in the moment. It takes incredible skill on the instrument and the ability to listen and respond, and that was in evidence with the remarkable musicianship and creativity of saxophonist Cathal Roche and drummer David Lyttle, both experienced jazz musicians and composers, forming an impressive trio with flautist Lina Andonovska, who introduced her contrabass flute into the performance. This was no free jazz onslaught however, the opening breathy flute introduction by Andronovska developing into an improvised piece not that far removed from the kind of meticulously scored works composed by Salvatore Sciarrino. Roche opened another section with a melody somewhere between Arabian and Irish folk expanded upon by the other two musicians with wonderful interplay. A final 'encore' opened by Andronovska took the music much closer to the free improvisation jazz world but always there was a sense of purpose of creativity, control, listening and responsiveness to each other as well as consideration for their audience.

In such choices in the music programming and the musicians, the inaugural TERRAIN Festival of New Music - what I managed to catch of it - seemed to take this idea of programming a wide variety of adventurous new music and presenting it in an accessible format as something of a mission statement. Even the Accidental Theatre has an intimacy and close familiarity that commands attention and engagement with the performers and the music. This an impressive start to a new venture that - along with the work of The Belfast Ensemble, the Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble, Sonorities and Moving on Music's Brilliant Corners Festival - feels like it has something vital to contribute to the local contemporary music and arts scene.

External links: New Horizons Music, Contemporary Music Centre, Moving on Music