Farpoint Recordings are pleased to announce the release of Mixed Circuits, an ambitious double CD by David Bremner featuring the extraordinary talents of Elizabeth Hilliard, Andreea Banciu, Paul Roe and Izumi Kimura. 
 
Each of the four works on this double album is a cycle of several short movements or panels, investigating a single impulse: the exploration of a minimal, drone aesthetic through an atonal harmonic fabric of continuous gradual unfolding. Gesture and rhetoric are avoided in favour of a flickering presence, with imperceptible transitions. 
 
Overlaid like quadrats on this elusive, amorphous organic material are clear-cut song forms; they are overlaid independently of the material, so that material and form question each other, sound each other out. 
 
Conceived in partnership with Farpoint Recordings as an intensive exploration of cyclic form, and recorded and mixed/mastered by Farpoint’s David Stalling, the release features various chamber music combinations of four stellar performers: Andreea Banciu (viola), Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano), Paul Roe (clarinet) and Izumi Kimura (piano). Included are two song-cycles, with texts by Bremner’s long-standing collaborator Billy Mills, and Rosmarie Waldrop. An in-depth conversation between Mills and Bremner about the background to Logical Fallacies is included in the liner notes. The composition, recording and publishing process were supported by funding from the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
 
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Mixed Circuits 
works by David Bremner 
Andreea Banciu, Elizabeth Hilliard, Izumi Kimura, Paul Roe
 
CD 1 
[1-9] Possible Vignettes
[10-21] Pre & Con, or, Positions and Junctions
Total Duration 51:08
 
CD2:
[1-6] Logical Fallacies
[7] Developing Variations 
Total Duration 53:00
 
Credits:
Recorded and Mixed by David Stalling
Mastered by David Stalling
Design by Illuminate Studio
Photography by Doreen Kennedy
Produced by David Bremner and David Stalling
CD Project coordinated by Anthony Kelly and David Stalling
Compositions copyright David Bremner 2022
Liner notes copyright Billy Mills and David Bremner 2022
 
Supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon                                                                          
 
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About David Bremner:
David Bremner is a composer and pianist/organist based in Dublin. Operating in an idiom that is both minimalist in texture and harmonically complex, his current work has involved creating fabrics made from atonal drone textures, and algorithmic composition. With soprano Elizabeth Hilliard he runs the music/text production company Béal. In 2013 he completed a PhD, supervised by Prof. Gráinne Mulvey, at TU Dublin Conservatoire, where he now lectures in composition.

Other than Mixed Circuits, recent projects include a chamber opera, Slow Recognition, developed in collaboration with dramaturg and director Hélène Montague and designer John Comiskey and featuring singers Elizabeth Hilliard, Naomi Louisa O’Connell and Rory Musgrave, which was produced to acclaim in July 2022, supported by Arts Council Bursary and Project funding. An ongoing collaboration with the violinist Larissa O’Grady led to a concert-length programme, shadow once complete, featuring algorithmic text, and commissions from writers Joanna Walsh and Kit Fryatt; it toured Ireland in 2022. A new commission for O’Grady will premiere in 2023.

Other recent performances include You window-pierc'd façades by Lina Andonovska (flute) and Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano) at the Hugh Lane Gallery Sundays @ Noon series (December 2019), Permanent Ritornello by Crash Ensemble in New Music Dublin (March 2019) and Themework by RETRO DISCO in Music Current (April 2019). He often works with poet Billy Mills, most recently on a two-hour-long cantata performed in 2018, Four, for Baroque instruments, voices and electronics.

With piper Mark Redmond, David in 2014 released the CD l'air du temps/the spirit of the times; a track was selected by the Contemporary Music Centre to feature on their promotional CD New Music:New Ireland 2. Excerpts have been broadcast on Lyric FM, BBC Radio 3, and the European Broadcasting Network. Works of his also feature on CD releases by Anne-Marie O'Farrell and Elizabeth Hilliard (Métier/Divine Arts Records).

His music is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin.
 
www.davidbremner.net
www.soundcloud.com/david-bremner
www.bealfestival.com