Bren Finan reviews The Book of Hours for The JMI
Together Never Fails
From Rebecca Saunders and Séverine Ballon to Gavin Bryars and Galina Grigorjeva, the music at The Book of Hours two-day festival in Louth knew no borders, writes Brendan Finan in the Journal of Music
The first standing ovation at the Book of Hours festival, this year’s major Louth Contemporary Music Society event, was for the society’s founder, Eamonn Quinn. In a ceremony at the opening of the two-day festival on 22 June, Quinn received the prestigious Belmont Prize for contemporary music. Gabriele Forberg-Schneider, president of the Forberg-Schneider Foundation, the German body which awards the prize, spoke of Quinn as ‘the border man who knows no borders’, and of his ‘instinct for connections in the repertoire’. In a gesture towards this inescapable political moment, three of the four speeches during the prize-giving mentioned borders. After all, few nations understand borders and walls as completely as Ireland and Germany. Read more here
