Frank McGuinness’s speech at the Zrazy Launch, Whelans, Dublin,
Oct 20, 2015
I am delighted to be here to launch Zrazy’s new recording The Art of Happy Accidents. I’m not too sure what you can say about music that the music itself does not say better, but I want to salute Maria Walsh’s and Carole Nelson’s continued achievement as they sustain their explorations of what two wonderful performers might spark off each other as they create something that is utterly their own. The Art of Happy Accidents delivers a stunning set of compositions, lyrically alert to some strange ambiguities, capable of fusing melodies with complex familial histories, as in Teampall na mBo and in Night Crossing, where whole destinies are asserted in a single song. This formal compression is subverted by the tempos and charged rhythms liberated in the playing itself, allowing Zrazy to experiment through the ecstatic euphoria of You Make Me Happy, and the strange brews concocted along the ley lines of a life mapped out in Down With Jazz. We are listening to artists together at the peak of their powers, sharing marvellous secrets and potent riddles. The most potent irony occurs in what for me is the record’s highlight, the combined blessing and curse of Go Now, a profound hymn steeped in the knowledge that love lost was once love won, and that its end changes the world entirely. I call this irony because it is so in the light of what shines most brightly through the whole of The Art of Happy Accidents, and is the proof positive this CD offers, that after their years of professional creativity, Zrazy continue together, provoking each other into making invigorating melody, surprising, even shocking their audience with their honesty and integrity, providing a soundtrack to the times we live in, celebrating in their art the marriage of true minds that is their imagination, their unique imagination. In short, they’re still at it, and they’re better than ever. I congratulate Maria and her partner Anne, as I do Carole and Deborah, and we all know why we are here tonight. It is to pay homage to two of Ireland’s best in their business, most loved, most beautiful Carole and Maria. Long live Zrazy.
Oct 20, 2015
I am delighted to be here to launch Zrazy’s new recording The Art of Happy Accidents. I’m not too sure what you can say about music that the music itself does not say better, but I want to salute Maria Walsh’s and Carole Nelson’s continued achievement as they sustain their explorations of what two wonderful performers might spark off each other as they create something that is utterly their own. The Art of Happy Accidents delivers a stunning set of compositions, lyrically alert to some strange ambiguities, capable of fusing melodies with complex familial histories, as in Teampall na mBo and in Night Crossing, where whole destinies are asserted in a single song. This formal compression is subverted by the tempos and charged rhythms liberated in the playing itself, allowing Zrazy to experiment through the ecstatic euphoria of You Make Me Happy, and the strange brews concocted along the ley lines of a life mapped out in Down With Jazz. We are listening to artists together at the peak of their powers, sharing marvellous secrets and potent riddles. The most potent irony occurs in what for me is the record’s highlight, the combined blessing and curse of Go Now, a profound hymn steeped in the knowledge that love lost was once love won, and that its end changes the world entirely. I call this irony because it is so in the light of what shines most brightly through the whole of The Art of Happy Accidents, and is the proof positive this CD offers, that after their years of professional creativity, Zrazy continue together, provoking each other into making invigorating melody, surprising, even shocking their audience with their honesty and integrity, providing a soundtrack to the times we live in, celebrating in their art the marriage of true minds that is their imagination, their unique imagination. In short, they’re still at it, and they’re better than ever. I congratulate Maria and her partner Anne, as I do Carole and Deborah, and we all know why we are here tonight. It is to pay homage to two of Ireland’s best in their business, most loved, most beautiful Carole and Maria. Long live Zrazy.