Joining two things to get a bigger idea
I WAS sitting on the playing fields of Summerhill College for a while last weekend, waiting for a music class to finish, enjoying the sun. From that angle, the college is framed beautifully by Knocknarea on the left and Benbulben on the right. I thought about taking a photo, but the angles and distances involved meant that there was no way you’d get the two mountains into the same shot. It reminded me of a great photo that my parents have on their wall at home. It’s a panoramic shot, blown up to about 5ft by 1.5ft. The two aforementioned mountains take centre stage, but it’s only possible to get them into the same picture because the angle of the shot is different.
The picture was taken from somewhere near Ladies Brae, heading out towards west Sligo, and the skill of the photographer, Ciarán McHugh, in this instance was to take these unrelated landmarks and pick the right angle so that they became related, getting across a bigger idea in the final picture.
It’s entitled ‘Beaches and Mountains of Sligo’ and you can find it on the Panoramas Sligo page of Ciarán’s website – www.ciaranmchugh.com.
In a similar way, I read once that a characteristic of good writing is to take unrelated topics and pick the right angle so that they too become related, also getting across a bigger idea in the process.
Back to Summerhill for a moment. The sounds of the Sligo Academy of Music Jazz Orchestra began wafting towards me. They were practising outside, and as I sat in the sun, trying to put a name to the famous yet elusive big band tune I could hear, I was brought back to the Second World War, and a scene from Pearl Harbor, the 2001 film.
In this scene, there was a jazz band playing similar music at a goodbye party for a group of soldiers before they headed off to war, and while it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to be happening at that time, I wondered how this music came to being kept alive here on the other side of the world 80 years later.
Because it’s amazing for our music scene. Not since the heyday of the Jazz Ladds have so many trumpets, trombones and saxophones been heard in this town, so huge credit is due to Niamh Crowley, Stan Burns, and the many other teachers who made this possible.
And then it struck me.
Irish teenagers in 2021 and 1940s big band music. Two seemingly unrelated concepts, but someone somewhere in the Sligo Academy of Music picked this Jazz Orchestra angle so that they became related, getting across the bigger idea of these instruments becoming cool in the process.
Genius.
Kieran Quinn plays piano and brings people together in music. You can sign up for his weekly email letter by visiting kieranquinn.ie/letter and he can be contacted by email at kieran@kieranquinn.ie
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