The Stella Maris Project

“…you will find that the distance between yourself and the space’s sounds has diminished, and that you have become part of the place.”
Project Arts Centre is proud to support Sean Carpio and The Stella Maris Project in a series of intimate live performances taking place in the beautiful surrounds of six churches across Ireland, beginning in one of Dublin’s finest Georgian churches, St Werburgh’s Church (built 1719).
The Stella Maris Project, taking its name from the Stella Maris church in Donegal, is a quintet featuring some of the most renowned European musicians and is the brainchild of long time musical collaborators, Irish drummer Sean Carpio and Danish guitarist Mikkel Ploug. Featuring drums, electric guitars, saxophone, clarinet and double bass, the compositions they will perform for you have a unique beginning – they are based on speech reverberations collected from these six churches around Ireland.
Carpio and Ploug visited each of the six churches to record actor Genevieve Hulme-Beaman reciting the poem How To Disappear by Egyptian poet Haytham El-Wardany. Carpio’s grandfather was the architect of The Stella Maris Church– making his visit there with cousin Hulme-Beaman, an especially personal one. Whilst Genevieve recited the poem the same way each time, the connection of her voice with the acoustics of each individual church revealed 6 very different recordings. These were then used as the inspiration for the arrangement of an instrumental suite of new music for a quintet.
The final step of this formidable project is to revisit each of the churches where the recordings initially took place and to perform the resulting compositions live to a local audience in the very spaces from which they have emerged, evoking through music the various ways in which buildings echo their inhabitants, visitors and builders.
Please note that the concert venue is located at St Werburgh’s Church, Werburgh St, Dublin 8, for national tour dates see below.
This is a non ticketed event, admission is paid on the door.