Hard Rain perform at Sound of Belfast with a programme on the relationship between human beings and nature, drawing on poetry and text.

Hard Rain with special guests Malachy Frame and Sarah Richmond

This programme is a reflection on the relationship between human beings and nature, drawing on poetry and text. It challenges the idea that humanity has constructed itself as separate from, and superior to, nature. This also considers parallels within our society in how throughout history, patriarchal culture has similarly constructed women as subordinate and acquiescent.

Birding By Ear by Perry Goldstein was developed out of a long-standing collaboration with writer Richard Powers. His six bespoke bird-themed poems serve as a subtle thematic precursor to his ecological novel The Overstory. They explore specific birds, examining what human beings project onto nature out of a deep-seated loneliness and desire to connect. Áine Mallon's Songs for Revered Scorned Women (world premiere performance) was written in collaboration with Emily DeDakis. In this song cycle each movement uniquely adopts the perspective of a woman drawn from history, mythology, or religion, who has served as the archetype for misogynistic treatment or the establishment of patriarchal standards. Greg Caffrey composed his setting of Seamus Heaney's acclaimed poetry collection Death of a Naturalist in 2020 with this version for Hard Rain written in 2022 while Relativity and Revelation by Sarah Lianne Lewis sets poems by American poet J.L. Williams alongside translated traditional Japanese tanka - haiku. The juxtaposition of the stillness and serenity of the heron against the innate complexities of our human interactions, becomes a reflection on our fragile existence in the natural world.

PROGRAMME

Birding by Ear (2019) - Perry Goldstein / Poetry by Richard Powers *Irish premiere

Song of the Birds (1998) - Sally Beamish / From Catalan Folksong

Songs from Revered Scorned Women (2025) - Áine Mallon / Text by Emily DeDakis *World premiere

Relativity and Revelation (2015) - Sarah Lianne Lewis / Poetry by J.L.Williams

Buaneitilt (2022) - Jane O’Leary / Poetry by Emily Dickinson

Death of a Naturalist (2020/22) - Greg Caffrey / Poetry by Seamus Heaney

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TICKETS

£15/£10 (Free for QUB staff & students)

Donations gratefully received.

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OUR FUNDERS

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble are supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and are Ensemble in Residence at Queen's University Belfast.

Description supplied by the event organiser.