Sam Perkin is one of the most distinctive voices in Irish music, a Cork-born composer who trained at the Cork School of Music and the Conservatoire de Lyon, and whose pieces tend to start from questions no one else thinks to ask. What does a skateboarder's flow have in common with an ensemble's? (Grey Area, his collaboration with Crash Ensemble, answers with a film of Cork's skaters.) What would the northern lights sound like as string music? (Alta.)
His long partnership with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the country's leading new-music players has produced a catalogue by turns playful, meditative and sly, never more sly than Freakshow, his piano trio of sideshow portraits, which has become a calling card for trios on both sides of the Atlantic.
Behind the wit is a serious ear: Perkin's music is obsessed with attention itself, with how listening changes what is heard. Kerry audiences can test the proposition live.
