We’re pleased to announce another 37 contributors for our 2017 release of Waywords and Meansigns, setting James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to music.
Our 2017 audio will be released on 4 May, the publication anniversary of Finnegans Wake. With over a hundred different contributors from all around the world some pieces may arrive a little late because, well, that’s the nature of the thing. But you can expect a ton of amazing stuff on 4 May 2017. (And a few more artists will be added to our roster by then, too.)
As previously announced, this will be our final large-scale release but contributors may continue to create music for our project on a rolling basis. Interested? Get involved.
We will highlight various contributors and even preview some tracks in the coming weeks, so stayed tuned or join our mailing list for updates. To see the full list of Waywords and Meansigns contributors, head to our Artists page.
Our latest additions to the project include…
Creators of pocket guides to James Joyce’s Dublin, At it Again!; multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Barry Bender; co-creation from Facetten artists Judith Brokking, Julia Henneman, and Yung-Tuan Ku in collaboration with composer-performer Julia Barnes; Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth and Lou Rogai of Lewis & Clarke as Cedar Sparks; Joe Cassidy of Butterfly Child and Assassins; Rich Chapman of The Plan, Private Trousers, Rare Birds and Southend Records; musician, filmmaker, visual and performance artist Ken Davidson; Alek Erickson, son of Lars the pianoplunker and artisan of concrete obelisks; “A Band” veteran Sticky Foster & the duo Usurper, from the British fringe; Julian La Brooy aka Hitori Tori collaborating with Wake veteran Kevin Spenst; composer and ESP-Disk manager Steve Holtje; writer, teacher and composer M. David Hornbuckle (PopCanon, Eurotoaster, the Dixieland Space Orchestra); expressive arts activity coordinator, youth worker, performer and poet Kaia Jackson; Glasgow’s ambient music project Junklight; London-based trio Little Sparta with Sally Timms (Mekons) and Martin Billheimer (The Devil Bell Hippies); woodwind instrumentalist and composer Seán Mac Erlaine (This Is How We Fly, Quiet Music Ensemble); Renata Meints, James Joyce and John Milton doctoral canditate at University of Birmingham; The Most Ever Company, a semianonymous art collective in Oklahoma; Whip aka Timesbold aka Jason Merritt, Rollerskate Skinny’s Kenneth Griffin, and Mercury Rev veterans Jason Sebastian Russo and Paul Dillon as Old Fiends; Jean-Hervé Péron aka jhp/Art-Errorist, founding member of faUSt, collaborating with educator, lecturer and performer Raphael Byrne; the Philip Cleary Ensemble, a collaboration of performers, artists and musicians from Sydney, Australia; poet, artist and healer Karen Ponzio; actor John Delaney, audio-visual producer Tris Dalton and Lacanian clinician&musician Raphael Montague as Re-Scribe; open score by UK composer Andrea Riley; Seattle quartet revitalizing electro-genre, The Science of Deduction; Spider Stacy of Celtic punk band The Pogues with psychedelic-punk Cajun band Lost Bayou Ramblers; Acid Invader and White P.E. Leather as Sauerbraten Beef Ring; Polish composer and musician from Warsaw, Kamil Szuszkiewicz, and off kilter songstress Pictorial Candi; Cincinnati’s Brian Tyree of johnnytwentythree and Social Mechanism; Western Mass Wydyde weirdo Van Kolodin aka Vanelectro; musician, writer and animator Bruce Woodside; Swedish composer, sound artist and performer Joel Wranning.
Contributors are taking short passages of the Wake — a paragraph, a page, a few pages — to set to music. The result will be a mosaic of musical readings and performances, plus a few “non-musical” readings for good measure. It will be weird, wondrous and fun.
Stay tuned for music, announcements and more!
Very interested in this. I am not a musician but a visual artist sometimes using Finnegans Wake as a source of titles and inspiration. I will pass news of this project to the composer Will Gregory (originator of Goldfrap).