Finnegans Wake: Here Comes Everybody - Concert

Finnegans Wake: Here Comes Everybody is the opening concert in a cycle of works adapting James Joyce’s great modernist novel for the musical stage, performed by Roger Redgate and Ensemble Exposé.

Created by composer and author Alastair White, the cycle is conceived as a thirteen-year project leading to the book’s centenary in 2039. Finnegans Wake is regarded as the world’s most controversial text — to some, unreadable, to others, a masterpiece. How do you adapt a book that resists all definition? Finnegans Wake: Here Comes Everybody is the beginning of such an experience: one that forgoes fixed form and definition, that cannot be contained within a single iteration or instance, and which unfolds in years rather than minutes.

This first instalment — a one-hour reimagining of an operatic overture — is performed by veteran avant-gardists Roger Redgate and Ensemble Éxposé, a group recognised for championing the most challenging of contemporary music since its formation in 1984. Alastair White’s work has been described “a whole new exciting genre of art” (BBC Radio 3), and this ensemble of distinguished soloists bring his translation of Joyce’s rhythmic, fluid language to life in musical technicolour — including readings by RTÉ’s Cathal Murray. Produced by the Irish curator Gemma A. Williams, the project is supported by DCCI and created in partnership with the London Irish Centre.