Team copy — kirkosensemble

About Unit 44 Events Book the Space Team Archive Beginner's Guide

Management:

The same administration team runs Unit 44 and all other aspects of Kirkos

Our artistic director & founder is Sebastian Adams

Our general manager is Paul Scully

Our event producer is Alice Quinn Banville

Our marketing manager is Isabella Utria Mago

Our ensemble revolves around a core group of musicians who have been playing together since our student days:

Sebastian Adams (Viola)

Robert Coleman (Harmonium / Melodica)

Joan Somers Donnelly (Voice / Performer)

Jane Hackett (Violin)

Miriam Kaczor (Flute)

Hannah Miller (Horn)

Yseult Cooper Stockdale (Cello)

Almost all of our projects also rely on people not listed here—we collaborate widely!

Sebastian Adams (b. 1991) is an Irish composer and performer.
He founded Kirkos as an undergraduate student and his artistic practice has been enmeshed with it ever since.

His projects include a string quartet performing in the sea as the tide rises around them, an interactive program that turns Twitch chat streams into music notation, and a largescale project “Stolen Music” comprising nothing but uncleared and unauthorised audio and video samples.

He has been widely commissioned and performed in Ireland and in places including Vienna, Graz, Paris, Marseille, Montreal, Cologne, New York, Potsdam, Antwerp and Görlitz. He studied composition in Dublin (RIAM), Vienna (mDW) and Paris (IRCAM).

As a performer, Sebastian has created solo projects, premiered many solo and chamber works for viola, and enjoys working closely with composers on their new music. He also occasionally performs early music on viola and gamba. He is particularly active as an improviser.

Composer Robert Coleman’s current work draws from numerous fields such as soundscape studies, site-specific art, field recording, and community and participatory arts. In 2019 he completed his Masters studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Yannis Kyriakides and Diderik Wagenaar and having also previously studied architecture his work often features spatial concepts and metaphors as frameworks for the composition process. He is currently a PhD student at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast focusing on Ecological Sound Art.

He has been commissioned by Crash Ensemble and New Music Dublin, the National Concert Hall Dublin, Irish National Opera, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Tallaght Community Arts, violinist Larissa O’Grady and others.

Highly active in artistic direction he is a founding member and performer with Dublin based experimental music group Kirkos and in 2023 he founded the School of Wild Listening, a platform for the discussion and dissemination of ecological sound art. Its aim is to promote an understanding of the living world and the current challenges we face through open and accessible listening and creative sound events.

Robert has a pressing interest in interdisciplinary collaborations and has worked with various artists such as the Experimental Film Society, Pim Piët (visual artist/designer) Laura Sarah Dowdall(dancer/ choreographer with RUNNING BLIND), Mihai Cucu(visual artist), Slipdraft(lighting design) amongst others.

He has participated in various masterclasses, workshops and residencies with composers and artists such as Peter Ablinger, Jennifer Walshe, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, John Godfrey, Jorg Widmann, Jonathan Dove, Liza Lim, Houston Dunleavy, Sebastian Fagerlund, Gráinne Mulvey, Deirdre Gribbin, Andrew Hamilton, Gert Dumbar (graphic designer), Cocky Eek (visual artist/designer), EL Putnam (artist/performer), Vicky Langan (film/sound artist), David Helbich (sound artist), Amanda Coogan (performance artist), Edu Comelles (sound artist).

As a performer he has explored experimental repertoire from Irish and international artists, performing at the Hugh Lane Sundays at Noon series, Dublin Fringe 2021, New Music Dublin 2017, Kirkos: Fluxfest, Jennifer Walshe’s Aisteach, Kirkos: Body Noise Work and also in collaboration with composer/performer Andy Ingamells and Tonnta amongst others. He is also a member of QUBe, an improvised and experimental music ensemble based at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast.

Joan Somers Donnelly is an Irish artist based between Brussels and Dublin, with a collaborative practice that moves between performance, visual art, writing, and organising. Previous work includes a human choir for cows; a piece for sea swimmers; an interactive fantasy about the politics of housing in Dublin; a video essay about social spaces of gig economy workers; and performance interventions for lamp posts, zoom calls, U-bahn stations and apartments. Joan studied Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin and the Freie Universität Berlin, and in 2021 completed a Masters of Fine Art (Autonomous Design) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. She has also trained through workshops and intensive courses in physical theatre with DAH Teatar (Belgrade), Butoh with Minako Seki (Berlin), dance theatre with Michael Keegan Dolan (Dublin), and choreography at SNDO (Amsterdam).

Her practice is primarily concerned with examining existing social structures and creating not-yet-existing ones, using live situations as a testing ground for experiments in relating. Much of her recent work has focused on creating frameworks for playful exchange and co-creation, such as the group improvisation practice messing, the platform for collaboration You and Me and an Anger Club for girls. She has been involved in a range of collective/ensemble projects including Outlandish Theatre Platform’s Open Theatre Making Ensemble, the Truck Stop Cultural Centre, the para-institute for art and precarity (pKp), One Field Fallow, and Post/Pandemics by radical_hope.

She was a 2023 recipient of an Arts Participation Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, and is a 2023/24 Artist in Residence at Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute on the interdisciplinary research project Data Stories, which will critically map housing and property data in Dublin. Having previously collaborated with the group on several projects over the years, including The Buffer Zone and Biosphere, Joan joined Kirkos as a member in 2023.

Jane Hackett is a violinist and mixed genre performance artist specialising in classical and contemporary music. Her Arts practice is centered around empathetic artistic research, cultural and societal observations and furthering accessibility within the music sector.
From an extensive musical training (BA and MA degrees in solo and chamber performance), Jane’s career spans from classical concert settings with orchestras and ensembles (including National Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, Irish National Opera, ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, London Concertante, Wexford Festival Opera and with Musici Ireland, Vanbrugh Quartet, Camerata Ireland and under conductors Maxim Vengerov, Gianandrea Noseda, Nathalie Stutzmann, Leonard Slatkin, Julian Rachlin) to creating and directing multi-faceted concerts and projects combining classical music with various other forms of art.

As violinist, Jane has performed solo with the RTE Concert Orchestra on a number of occasions, making her solo debut with them at the National Concert Hall Dublin in 2016. She has also appeared as soloist at the Carthage International World Music Festival, the Leadership Seminars Scotland, alongside acclaimed film Director, Lord David Puttnam and for living composer, Arvo Pärt. She is a proud recipient of the Lyric FM Bursary, the Individual Artist Award, Capacity and Resilience Building Award, was winner of the Maura Dowdall Concerto Competition, Colin Stavelely Award for Best String Player 2016 and is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council, South Dublin County Council, Arts and Disability Ireland and Culture Ireland.
Jane’s involvement with Kirkos Ensemble has been an influential factor in the pursuit of her many artistic endeavours, giving her the space to redefine her beliefs around conceptual and standardised concert approaches. Pre Pandemic she broadcast a radio show for children, Kids Classical Club and co-founded a chamber collective, ReClassified, (classical music performances in live music venues in Dublin) both aiming to bridge the gap between performer and audience.

Combining violin playing and directing, Jane was appointed Collaborative Projects Director with chamber ensemble, Musici Ireland and Assistant Creative Director on their new production 'A Mother's Voice' as part of Triskel Art Centre's Write, Record, Perform Bursary 2022. Jane finds joy in bringing people together through Art and has begun working with members of the Deaf community to understand how we each interpret sound. She was awarded the Arts Council’s Music Project Award 2022 to devise a new silent concert experience in collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf and after acclaimed reviews, she looks forward to developing this partnership further.
Jane is a Britten Pears Young Artist.

Establishing herself as one of the most versatile flautists in Ireland, Miriam Kaczor is equally at home on modern, historical and contemporary instruments. She plays principal flute with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, has guested as principal with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra and was recently invited to tour as first flute with Bach Gesellschaft Potsdam. As a soloist she has appeared with the RTE Concert Orchestra, RTE National Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Esker Festival Orchestra and Dublin Orchestral Players, with several live broadcasts on RTE radio. Passionate about chamber music, Miriam has played at the Killaloe, Westport, Monkstown, Clonmel, Sligo, Kilkenny, East Cork and New Music Dublin festivals as well as the National Concert Hall series, sharing stage with Camerata Kilkenny, Collegium Marianum, Ensemble Marsyas, Vanbrugh Quartet, Wilbert Hazelzet, Una Hunt, Isabelle O'Connell, Joachim Roewer, Geraldine O'Doherty and others. She has been a member of Kirkos Ensemble since 2012, premiering numerous pieces in venues of every shape and form around Ireland. She has recorded with Crash Ensemble and collaborated with the Contemporary Music Centre, bringing contemporary Irish music to audiences at home, in the UK, New York and Beijing.

Miriam was the Irish Freemasons' Young Musician of the Year 2015, recipient of the inaugural RDS Jago Award, Flax Trust Bursary and multiple prizes in the ESB Feis Ceoil. She was a pupil of William Dowdall at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Michael Cox, Lisa Beznosiuk and Rachel Brown in London and will begin studying for her MA with Erwin Klambauer of the Wiener Symphoniker this October. She has had memorable masterclass encounters with Sir James Galway, William Bennett, Peter-Lukas Graf and Felix Renggli, among others. She was a Britten-Pears Young Artist for 3 years, working with artists such as Semyon Bychkov, Mark Padmore and Phillippe Herreweghe, and a scholarship participant of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra Institute in Toronto, mentored by Claire Guimond.

Miriam is grateful for the support of Music Network funded by the Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht & South Dublin County Council.

Horn player Hannah Miller grew up in Ireland, received her Bachelor’s degree from Finland’s Sibelius Academy and graduated with a Master’s degree from New York’s Juilliard School, where she was awarded with the William Schuman Prize for outstanding achievement in music and leadership.

Hannah is currently Principal Horn with the Irish National Opera Orchestra, a member of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and a Trialist with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. She also performs with the Wexford Festival Opera Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and is a former member of the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland and the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra in Finland.

As a member of Kirkos since 2012, she has been featured in many of their concerts and series over the years performing a wide range of experimental works. Her dedication to new music also includes performances with Crash Ensemble, Le Concert Impromptu and Ulysses Ensemble in recent years.

Hannah is the Festival Director and founder of ‘FuddleFest’, a family-run music festival based at her home in Fuddletown, Wexford which first took place in August 2020 and has gone from strength to strength in the years since. She spends all of her free time tending to her herd of goats and her flock of chickens and ducks.

Yseult Cooper Stockdale enjoys a versatile career between the UK and Ireland. She has worked with both RTE orchestras, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Welsh National Opera, Southbank Sinfonia and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. She loves performing as a chamber musician and had a spring tour in 2019 with the Alberi Piano Trio, including performances at Music for Wexford and the Crawford Summer Lunchtime Series. She has also been invited to play with Musici Ireland, Crash Ensemble, Ficino Ensemble and London-based Scordatura Collective. In 2018 she played at inaugural Beckett Chamber Music Festival and has also played as a young artist with the Britten-Pears Orchestra and at Bantry Chamber Music Festival and Chamber Music on Valentia. In 2018 her concerto performances included the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Cork Fleischmann Symphony Orchestra, and Beethoven’s triple concerto with Wexford Sinfonia. She has also performed as soloist in the NCH, playing Elgar, and in 2016 toured with the Esker Festival Orchestra performing the Dvoark concerto.

She has a keen interest in exploring new music, and has performed over 50 premieres with Kirkos Ensemble and has performed at 5 ICC concerts. Recent projects include an online collaboration with sound artist Philip Fogarty, in association with Music for Galway and supported by the Arts Council.

Yseult was a recipient of the John Vallery Memorial Prize for highest placed string player at the 2015 Freemasons Young Musician of the Year and was awarded the 2016 Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe scholarship. Yseult has a 1st Class Honours MA, from the CIT Cork school of Music, and BA, from the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where her teachers were Christopher Marwood and Bill Butt. In 2015/16 she studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy", Leipzig, with Peter Hörr.

Paul Scully is the General Manager of Kirkos. He is responsible for the day-to-day running of Unit 44. If you've been to an event here before you will likely have seen him at the desk operating the sound and lights or at the door taking tickets. He manages our bookings, writes our funding applications, maintains the venue and studios, produces events in Unit 44, and helps with the production of all Kirkos events too.

Paul is also a composer himself. His work, which is often humorous, ambitious, and chaotic, is multidisciplinary and uses elements of theatre and performance art as well as video and lighting. He was the CMC's emerging composer for 2022-2023 and is in receipt of an Arts Council Bursary Award to develop his practice. More info about his work here: www.paulscully.net

Alice Quinn Banville is the Events Producer for Kirkos. This involves helping everyone who uses Unit 44 for gigs, launches, exhibitions and everything in between to access the space and ensure the smooth running of their event, from setting up and operating tech to checking tickets to video documentation and packing everything away at the end. As well as assisting General Manager Paul in keeping the space tidy and equipment in good order, Alice has also developed a digital archive of the hundreds of events and projects initiated by Kirkos since 2012, and that have taken place at Unit 44 since 2021.

Alongside this work, Alice is a freelance producer, curator and DJ. She has worked for various art institutions in Dublin as well as Amsterdam and New York such as Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, IMMA, De Appel and Paula Cooper Gallery, and produces for a selection of theatre, film and art projects. Her curatorial practice is funded by the Arts Council and has involved working with emerging, DIY and multidisciplinary artists to create fun, engaging and pedagogical experiences for young people and audiences. She can be found performing regularly as a DJ at venues around the country, and monthly on dublin digital radio.

Isabella Utria Mago (she/they) is the Marketing Manager of Kirkos and is responsible for coordinating and executing all marketing activities run by Kirkos. This includes day-to-day marketing of events in Unit 44, graphic design for events and social media posts, managing social media channels, and keeping the website up to date.

Alongside their work for Kirkos, Isabella is a designer, multi‑disciplinary visual artist and researcher, working across experimental publishing, writing, sculpture, and mixed‑media installation. Their practice focuses on issues related to the body, the human, the fold, identity and materiality, and explores the use of methodologies derived from graphic design in contemporary art-making. Isabella is currently completing a thesis in Contemporary Art Theory and Media Ecologies.