Bringing together six trailblazing artists, Stone Drawn Circles will perform in Ennis next week.
Described as an Irish new music ‘supergroup’ at their début performance at the international Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Stone Drawn Circles have embarked on their In Formation tour which includes a concert in glór on Thursday, May 9.
Artist-led, the ensemble features players from groups including Eighth Blackbird, stargaze, Crash Ensemble, and Ergodos.
Stone Drawn Circles are a collective of Lina Andonovska on flute, Nathan Sherman  on viola, singer Michelle O’Rourke , Alex Petcu on percussion, Caimin Gilmore on double bass and Úna Monaghan on harp and sound design.
They are bringing new works by four composers who are making waves within the global new music scene: Canadian composer Nicole Lizée, Northern Irish composers Úna Monaghan and Brian Irvine, and Australian composer Cat Hope.
‘In Formation’ by Úna Monaghan investigates three things: how a musician comes to be, what we carry with us and band dynamics in a humorous way. Part concert work/ part melodrama, the fourth wall is dropped in this interactive exploration of relationships within the creation of art. 
‘Landay Sequenzas’ by Cat Hope consists of five English translations of Afghan Landays set to music.
The Landay is an Afghan form of poetry consisting of a single couplet in Pashto, one of two national languages of Afghanistan.
Commonly shared orally amongst Pashtan women, they are sung aloud, sometimes with the beat of a hand drum and address themes of love, grief, homeland, war, and separation. This work is a tribute to the plight of Afghan women. 
‘A Call to Arms’ by Brian Irvine is one of a series of works that explores aspects of contemporary greed. At the height of the Covid Pandemic UK Conservative peer Michelle Mone together with her financial investor husband Doug Barrowman set up a company called PPE MEDPRO in order to claim £202 million worth of contracts to supply the government with masks and gowns. Corruption ensued, with this work taking a transcript from a television interview and setting it to an abstract cabaret of sorts. ‘A Call To Arms’ by Brian Irvine was commissioned by the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland for Stone Drawn Circles, supported by PRS Foundation Beyond Borders funding.
‘Brilliant musical scientist’ and the 2024 recipient of a JUNO award for Best Classical Composition, Nicole Lizée offers a slice of her unique compositional language in ‘Peril Earrings’, bringing together glitch and pop music styles in a kind of musical harmony.
For more see stonedrawncircles.com or www.glor.ie