Viriditas

Saolta Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture presents Viriditas as part of The Deepest Shade of Green.

Viriditas is a song cycle composed by acclaimed Irish artist and singer Ceara Conway in response to an extended process of engagement at Galway University Hospitals. Including newly composed contemporary songs and traditional European healing songs and rhythms from Georgia and Italy, Viriditas takes the listener on a journey through songs inspired by conversations with staff and patients, and recordings of hospital equipment, plants, and the tools of sound healers.

Named after the Latin term meaning greening power and life force, Viriditas opens with How are you?, a mesmerising embodiment of the voice of care. Guiding us through the Kartvelian, Irish, and English languages, it explores practices of healing, wellbeing, and the effects of systems on the spirit and health of those living and working within them. From Georgia, Iavnana, Batonebi and Mravalzhamieri interweave with songs in Irish that celebrate the medicinal properties of plants and lament on the current threat to their extinction. The traditional Irish names and curative qualities of Ireland’s wildflowers are eulogised in the poem Plant Chant, while the music of plants plays accompaniment in Vox Plantae. Set against nature, Viriditas also considers the adverse effects of hospital noise on healing and growth, incorporating samples of hospital tea trolleys, a Doppler fetal monitor, and hazard bins in the rhythmical White Noise. The artist’s playful arrangements continue with the cycle’s up-tempo finale An Damhan Alla agus an Mhíoltóg, melding the traditional Irish folk song with the tarantella style of Italian folk music historically used to heal the bite of a spider.

Ceara travelled to Georgia in September 2018 to learn traditional healing songs, which she shared in a series of staff singing workshops at Galway University Hospitals in May 2019 before engaging staff and patients in her research for the work. In February 2020 Viriditas was presented as a series of intimate performances by Ceara with singer/songwriter Anna Mullarkey through the wards and waiting rooms of Galway’s public hospitals, returning in September for Culture Night 2020. Performing live in Portiuncula University Hospital Chapel, this special intimate event will be streamed to patients throughout the hospital and the Viriditas CD will be gifted to patients across the Saolta University Health Care Group. A further performance will take place at Roscommon University Hospital, Roscommon. Performances are closed events, programmed for hospital patients and staff, and not open to the public. Viriditas is available as a limited edition CD and online for everyone at saoltaarts.com.

Vocal Commission for Saolta Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture in partnership with Galway University Hospitals and Saolta University Health Care Group.
All songs composed by Ceara Conway except for Mravalzhamieri, Batonebi, Iavnana and O Virdissimia Virga.
Vital Signs, How Are You, Vox Plantae, Viriditas, White Noise, Plant Chant © Ceara Conway 2019.
Recorded by Jack Talty at Lisseycasey Studios, Co Clare, December 12^th 2019 – January 3^rd 2020.
Vocals for Viriditas and Georgian songs recorded by Anna Mullarkey, Galway December 14^th, 2019.
Hospital sounds recorded by Annmarie Deasy, all other sound samples by Ceara Conway.
Mixed and mastered by Jack Talty at Lissycasey Studios, Co Clare.
CD Graphic Design and Illustrations by Ann McBride.
www.cearaconway.com

All images © Ceara Conway 2019.