GLENN GOULD BACH FELLOWSHIP
GLENN GOULD BACH FELLOW
2024-26
LIAM BYRNE
With a background in Historical Performance and degrees from Indiana and Oxford Universities, Liam has played and recorded with many of Europe’s leading Early Music ensembles, including the Huelgas Ensemble, Dunedin Consort, The Sixteen, i Fagiolini, and the viol consorts Phantasm, Concordia, and most notably Fretwork, with whom he toured and recorded extensively for several years.
In June 2017, Liam was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert museum to create a site-specific sound installation for their new Courtyard Gallery, whilst in 2015 Liam co-created a sound installation for the National Gallery’s Soundscapes exhibition. In 2016, he was commissioned by the Dulwich Picture Gallery to make an immersive work in their Mausoleum, in response to two 17th century paintings by Gerrit Dou.
Throughout his career, he has divided his time between making very old and very new music on the viola da gamba, and has frequently collaborated with composers, folk musicians, and electronic musicians such as Nico Muhly, Donnacha Dennehy, David Lang, Shara Nova, Efterklang, Martin Hayes, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Greg Saunier, and many others.
For his Fellowship Project, Liam is focusing on the exceptionally rare and beautiful music of the English lyra-viol repertoire from the early 17th century.
The project takes an experimental approach to the recording and transmission of lyra-viol music, using this repertoire as a case study to raise broader questions about the aesthetics of sound in classical music recording in general.
FELLOWSHIP MILESTONES 2024-26
Liam's Fellowship Project is strongly inspired by Glenn Gould’s hands-on relationship to recording and embraces the artificially constructive aspect of the recording process as a means of giving the listener a deeper relationship to the music and to the physicality of the instrument producing it.
The project will culminate in a series of artefacts that document this exploration and will be presented in its final form in the City of Weimar at the Thuringia Bach Festival in April 2026.