How does a small Irish border town pull in the likes of Terry Riley and Philip Glass? Eamonn Quinn, the man behind Louth’s contemporary music society, reveals all

'It’s just me, on the phone in my son’s bedroom.' The church hall that became contemporary music’s hottest venue

Eamonn Quinn is laughing about the time he took John Zorn to a karaoke night in the small Irish border town of Dundalk. “He’d just played this late-night organ recital at St Patrick’s [church],” explains Quinn, attempting to keep a straight face. “It was incredible. So, I took him for a drink at the Century Bar afterwards. I didn’t know it was karaoke night. All I remember is this downtown New York composer staring at this scary-looking individual belting out the Eagles’ ‘Take It to the Limit’. I didn’t know what to do. I just drank on.”

Locals have spotted minimalist pioneer Terry Riley in Clark’s bar & Philip Glass enjoying an Indian at Ali’z Restaurant

Such events are common in Dundalk and its slightly fancier neighbour, Drogheda. Keen-eyed locals with a decent knowledge of postwar contemporary music have spotted minimalist pioneer Terry Riley sipping a Guinness in Clark’s bar, Philip Glass enjoying an Indian at Ali’z Restaurant & Takeaway, and 86-year-old sonic experimentalist Alvin Lucier sitting in a waiting room at Dundalk railway station.

The sightings would not have been possible without the work of Quinn, the genial, self-deprecating figure behind Louth Contemporary Music Society. Over the past 11 years, the 50-year-old Dundalk resident has turned his town into a world-class centre for new music.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Terraced houses in Gyles’ Quay, County Louth, Ireland. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

LCMS began in 2006, when Quinn and his wife, Gemma, had a baby boy. Realising they could no longer attend concerts in Dublin and Belfast, they arranged a recital by British pianist Joanna MacGregor at Dundalk town hall. Buoyed by its success, their second LCMS event was more ambitious: Riley’s first performance in Ireland.

“I didn’t know you were meant to go through agents or pay for commissions,” says Quinn. “I just called him up and said, ‘Fancy doing this?’ Terry said he’d waited 72 years to be asked to perform in Ireland – he’s half Irish. Agents still say: ‘So-and-so is too busy, he’ll programme a concert for you instead.’ I say: ‘If he’s not coming, don’t bother.’”

Those who have accepted the invitation include Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who premiered his The Deer’s Cry choral work in 2008; Christian Wolff, who made his Irish performance debut in 2015 at the age of 81; Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina; and iconoclastic Italian modernist Salvatore Sciarrino, who will make his first Ireland visit this month for LCMS’s two-day Silenzio festival.

'Sciarrino was on the phone, saying, "I’ll bring my new opera over".'

“Sciarrino was on the phone, saying, ‘I’ll bring my new opera over’,” says Quinn. “I put the phone down and just went: ‘Sciarrino’s coming to Dundalk. His next opera is at La Scala!’ It’s all very weird.”

The youngest of nine, from a working-class South Armagh family, Quinn is not your typical arts programmer. Raised during the Troubles, he would regularly travel south over the border to Dundalk, marvelling at how it felt “like normal life. Nobody with guns, you weren’t worried about bombs going off. I wonder, is this me giving something back?”

Working with limited funding, while holding down a full-time job in music education, Quinn makes decisions based purely on personal taste, and the punk premise that “all you need is a room and some cash”. “LCMS is just me,” he stresses. “Before the performance, I’m walking around with the Hoover, lighting the candles. If I don’t have the enthusiasm, I can’t promote it.”

'Before the performance, I’m walking around with the Hoover, lighting the candles' Eamonn Quinn

His hands-on approach has won him many friends among composers and residents alike. Speaking in 2010, Riley said: “LCMS is significant because of Quinn. [His] choices are on musical worth, regardless of commercial potential. These risks keep music alive.” Ukranian composer Valentin Silvestrov described his 2009 Dundalk concert as “one of the best experiences of my life”. Rogers Covey-Crump, who sang in the Hilliard Ensemble, says Quinn’s events are special because “you experience new and unknown repertoire without the overtones of cliquishness and snobbism surrounding some festivals”. Swiss composer Jürg Frey, who returns to Louth with a new work for the Silenzio festival, says: “Eamonn works like a gallery curator, with risk and beautiful surprises [for] an audience with an attentive open mind.”

One such audience member is retired administrator Patricia Keating, who lives in Dundalk and whose music tastes range from Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits to Bach and Beethoven, but who had never encountered any contemporary classical music until her son took her to see Riley in 2007. “I was blown away,” she says. “It was unfamiliar, challenging, but I knew instinctively it was excellent. Bigger institutions wouldn’t take the same risks. Also, ticket costs are laughably low, often free. They’re doing it out of sheer passion.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pulling strings … Eamonn Quinn, co-founder of Louth Contemporary Music Society. Photograph: Alexander Van Ingen

Another Dundalk resident, Trish Lambe, curator at Dublin’s Gallery of Photography, believes Quinn is doing something quietly political. “He is presenting new, challenging works in a town often dismissed as a cultural backwater, with little support from a wider arts infrastructure,” she says. “That’s an act of defiance. Plus, he’s using churches, cathedrals of different denominations as his locations, defusing outdated religious segregations.”

Quinn agrees that the way LCMS operates contrasts with that of bigger arts institutions and claims that “the normal concert experience hasn’t changed in 150 years. We have to give people something different.” Thankfully, the wider world is starting to take notice. Film director Paolo Sorrentino used a track from an LCMS commission, David Lang’s just (after song of songs), in his 2015 film Youth. The track has been subsequently sampled by both US singer-songwriter Mike Posner and the xx, on their most recent album, I See You.

Quinn was also nominated for the prestigious 2018 Forberg-Schneider Foundation’s Belmont prize for his contribution to new music. “I’m incredibly grateful,” he says. “Maybe somebody will now say ‘Here’s 50 grand; what do you want to programme?’ Someone from Warner Music Italy rang up recently saying, ‘Can I talk to your legal department?’” He cracks up. “They think it’s this big thing. It’s not. It’s just me, on the phone in my son’s bedroom.”

Yet the LCMS needs help to ensure its ongoing success. “I’ve been doing two jobs for 11 years,” says Quinn. “Doing LCMS full-time requires more funds. The Arts Council aren’t bad people but we don’t register with them. LCMS needs support or it will fade away, or I’ll leave, because the workload is too much.”

It’s a bleak note to end on, but maybe it won’t end there. Quinn is doing something exceptional, and the evidence is there in the list of world-class composers willing to speak out in his support. “Exceptional things only happen when the passion of individuals nourish an idea,” Pärt tells me. “When Eamonn approached me in 2006 and asked for a new work, I felt this passion. It, and the story of Ireland, inspired me to create The Deer’s Cry, which ever since has been very close to my heart. I gratefully remember my collaboration with him and his society. The music world needs such committed fighters as Eamonn Quinn.”

• Silenzio festival is on 23 and 24 June in Dundalk. louthcms.org.