Deirdre Gribbin [b.1967]
somewhere I have never travelled [2015]

Performed by the Piatti Quartet
National Concert Hall, Dublin, 26th November 2023 (live audio recording)

Cummings poem of the same name is the inspiration behind this collaborative work. The speaker is the seer into the deepest soul of his listener. The language is direct, simple and poignant and it is the speaker who is the privileged one because he has the ability to look beyond the eyes of his listener into her soul.

somewhere I have never travelled is a series of snapshots of hidden glances caught briefly and released. This is what drew me to the words and to photographer Esther Teichmann’s enigmatic images, colour and speed of movement inherent in the human form. In the music I have enfolded a series of hidden names in melodic and rhythmic line. Relationships and the fragility of love are outlined, opened and tightly wrought. The music is intertwined as lovers breathing outwards and is released.

It is that which we don’t see or hear that lingers.  Deirdre Gribbin 2015

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

 E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

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Deirdre Gribbin was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

She was an award winner in the 2003 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers with her work Empire States, and won a prestigious Arts Foundation Award for her first opera Hey Persephone! which had an acclaimed run at the Aldeburgh/Almeida Opera Festival.

Her music has been performed worldwide including The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, UKwithNY Festival featured in The New York Times and The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.

She works extensively with theatre, film and dance. The Dark Gene featuring her music collaboration with scientist Sarah Teichmann was a finalist in the 2016 Berlinale Film Festival. She has written music for British Academy award-winning film My Kingdom starring Richard Harris as well as a number of commissions for BBC Radio 3 with director Lou Stein. She is a Fulbirght, Churchill and Leverhulme Fellow and has presented her music and science research at the EU Innovations Festival 2015. She has been developing music-based motivational healthcare apps in association with Holland Bloorview Kids Hospital, Toronto, Canada. She is artistic director of Venus Blazing Music Theatre Trust develoing programmes for young people with learning disabilities.          

Commissions include works for National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, The Ulster Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia and performances by the London Philharmonia (Music of Today series at The Royal Festival Hall) and pianist Imogen Cooper and Venus Blazing which will tour the UK in the Spring 2005 with violinist Ernst Kovacic, Britten Sinfonia conducted by Pierre Andre, with lighting by Bruce Springsteen's lighting designer Jeff Ravitz and directed by Lou Stein.