I documented the life and music of early Irish avant-garde artist Andrew Hunt (1860-1946) as part of Jennifer Walshe’s Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-garde project. This work was published in book form in 2015 by the Aisteach Foundation/Arts Council of Ireland, with an album of music from the project released on Migro Records the same year.

Performance directions for Andrew Hunt’s ‘Automatic Music Making‘ (1893).

This music and writing can also be accessed here via the Aisteach website, including an interpretation of Hunt’s Automatic Music Making (1893) by Panos Ghikas, Nick Roth, and Jennifer Walshe. This latter piece received its live premiere in Dublin on 31 January 2015 with these aforementioned performers and a video of this is below.

Live performance: Automatic Music Making (1893) with Panos Ghikas, Nick Roth, and Jennifer Walshe.

The Aisteach project received widespread acclaim and continues to evolve in the form of exhibitions, live performances, and new recordings:

“Aisteach […] offers a fresh way of presenting experimental music […] a Flann O’Brien-like pool of music history and satire.” Clive Bell, The Wire

“A fantastic early history of the Irish avant-garde.” Michael Dervin, The Irish Times

“A weird and wonderful history of unknown and forgotten radicals, often operating in parallel to the Irish cultural mainstream.” Ian Maleny, The Quietus.