As Ireland eases back to normality, Irish poet Gerard Smyth’s lockdown poem Isolation this evening leaps from the pages of the Irish Times to a worldwide stage on YouTube. “I’m very honoured and puzzled at how it’s going to work,” said Smyth, who is Poetry Editor of The Irish Times. Much of his vocal work to date has not been about tight, synchronised melody lines but creating clouds of sound. As well as composing new music, Lawton is a choral conductor and choir master and has arranged instrumental and vocal music for the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper. “If people come to it with a conservative mindset of how choir music should sound, they may be surprised or disappointed,” he said.

Source: The Irish Times June 17, 2020 12:56 UTC