Cool Steel Army

Roger Doyle is the Godfather of Irish electronic music. In 2007 he was awarded the Magisterium Prize at the Bourges International Electro-acoustic music competition in France - one of the most important prizes in the world for this type of music. 'Babel', his magnum opus, which took ten years to compose, was released on a 5-CD set in 1999, where each track corresponds to a 'room' or place within an imagined giant tower city. Roger has teamed up with Ireland's Psychonavigation Records to release 'Cool Steel Army'. The standout piece on this CD is 'Adolf Gebler, Clarinettist', a cinema for the ear, scored for orchestra, piano, female singer and pre-recorded acted scenes. The script, specially written by Carlo Gebler and adapted from his memoir 'Father and I', is based on the story of his grandfather Adolf Gebler, first clarinettist with the Radio Eireann Studio Players (a precursor of the RTE National Symphony Orchestra) which he joined in 1936. Adolf came to live in Ireland having fallen in love with an usherette he met after a concert he gave in Dublin in 1910. The first performance took place in February 2008 at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gavin Maloney. Just before the piece began the auditorium lights were lowered and all music stands were lit to increase the atmosphere. What followed was a beautiful insight into an otherworld where music and theatre form a beautiful unity. This recording is a revised and expanded studio version, prepared for CD, with singer Fionnuala Gill (the song was re-imagined and more than doubled in length), and re-created with the Vienna Symphonic Library software programme.