I’ve known Judith for many a year, so it is quite exciting to be able to tell you about her first album! She’s a young Composer who has worked with some of the cream of the Irish music scene such as Paul Roe, Kate Ellis and Concorde among many others.

The sounds are diverse and challenging, but there’s something quite unique about what she does. Check out the track Metallurgy below and you can buy the album here.

Ergodos is delighted to announce the release of What Was, a new album of music by Judith Ring. What Was documents the sensuous, rich and dark results of a painterly, highly personal approach to composition; it is the first album devoted solely to the last decade of music by Ring, one of Ireland’s most important composers.

Ergodos has been working with Judith Ring since its inception in 2006 – our very first festival of music in 2006 featured her ‘tape’ piece Metallurgy, which closes this new album. The years since have seen a portrait concert and numerous performances. As such, we are very proud to feature What was on our label.

The life-blood of these compositions is material arising from the musicians themselves – some of the finest exponents of new Irish music, including Paul Roe, Kate Ellis, Malachy Robinson, Michelle O’Rourke, Natasha Lohan and Concorde, as well as genre-crossing performers such as Laura Moody and Beau Stocker.

Ring’s work is first and foremost with the pulse in the arm that glides the bow over the string. She does not begin with a highly abstract, one-dimensional idea of that sound in notation. Her process can be described as truly experimental, in the sense of Charles Ives: open, aware, conscious, hopeful.

Judith Ring was born in Dublin in 1976. She holds an MPhil in Music and Media Technologies from Trinity College Dublin, and a PhD in music composition from the University of York. Her teachers have included Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle, Ambrose Field and Roger Marsh. Between 2000 and 2009 she was based in Berlin, then London, then York. She has lived in her native Dublin since 2009.