Festival of Voice: Ecstatic Visions

Saint Sister, Clarissa Connelly, Hatis Noit, Rachael Lavelle

David Brophy, conductor
Festival of Voice Chorus

Festival of Voice is a weekend festival celebrating the power, beauty and universality of the human voice.

A one-off concert, four iconoclastic voices come reimagine their songs for voice and choir… United in their innovation Saint Sister, Clarissa Connolly, Hatis Noit, Rachael Lavelle share an interest in the sublime, creating unique sound worlds with transcendent vocals.

Saint Sister’s sophomore record Where I Should End was met with critical acclaim, reaching Top 10 in Ireland & named ‘Best Album’ by the NI Music Prize, as well as a nomination for ‘Album of the Year’ by Choice Music Prize. Since their formation in 2014, they've toured the world many times with their mesmerising close-knit vocal harmonies and harp, and shared the stage with The National, Hozier, Keane, Lisa Hannigan, and Tori Amos.

Denmark-based Clarissa Connelly first gained international attention with Tech Duinn (2018), an hypnotic EP named after a spiritual gateway in Celtic myth. For her most recent album, The Voyager (2021), Clarissa physically walked the Scandinavian landscape, channelling melodies from ancient pre-Christian sites. The listener is invited on an inner journey that is by turns hushed and ecstatic.

Japanese artist Hatis Noit is a Japanese vocal performer hailing from distant Shiretoko in Hokkaido who now resides in London. Her accomplished range is astonishingly self-taught, inspired by everything she could find from Gagaku — Japanese classical music — and operatic styles, Bulgarian and Gregorian chanting, to avant-garde and pop vocalists.

Rachael Lavelle’s debut album Big Dreams was released last year to widespread acclaim and nominated for the Choice Music Prize for Best Album. Big Dreams is an existential coming-of-age album that chronicles the journey of a young woman searching for direction and meaning in a very strange world. Inspired by sounds of everyday life and an intriguing obsession with YouTube self-help videos, the album explores romance, directionless-ness, ambition and the expectations of the unsatisfied digital native.

Presented by NCH and supported by IPUT Real Estate Dublin