Full Biography
Born in Pennsylvania, George Higgs has worked for the last 20 years in Ireland as a composer. Kahoogaphone, his first guerrilla opera, tells the story of a homeless man who invents a machine designed not to work and built entirely out of junk. He produced and directed the play (and built the world's first Kahoogaphone) in Dublin's New Theatre in 1999, and followed this success with several street performances sponsored by Temple Bar Properties. Soon after he wrote his second guerrilla opera, The Suicide of Miss Understood, the story of a woman who, in a pill-induced reverie, dreams she is on a live TV show where the studio audience votes to spare or take her life. He produced this in Dublin's Temple Bar Music Centre with a cast of seventeen in July 2000.
Kahoogaphone CD with illustration of 1st Kahoogaphone (P. Hannan)
2001 saw a second production of Kahoogaphone, this time dubbed Dr. Scrontium's Mad Kahoogaphone and Homeless Medicine Show. The production toured Ireland in a rickety old van with a cast of 8 and a large Kahoogaphone (the world's second, sadly inferior to the first), ending up in the Salvation Army Church for a week's run as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. The production and tour joined forces with the homeless action group, Focus Ireland, in an effort to raise awareness of the lack of affordable housing in Ireland and encourage the government to introduce rent control. The cast and crew held a Kahoogaphone workshop for children and led a march along the Liffey boardwalk complete with Kahoogaphone, drummers and stilt-walkers.
From 2002 to 2004, George worked on his new wordless opera, HONGONGALONGALO, and undertook a master's degree in music technology at Trinity College. There he was able to workshop the opera in progress as part of his thesis and hold three performances of different sections of the piece. The opera tells no clear story, demands a cast of 32 musicians, lasts one and a half hours and involves the musicians moving about the entire space performing a variety of bizarre actions. Premiering in the Belvedere College chapel as part of the Dublin Fringe 2004, HONGONGALONGALO, received accolades all round including a four star review in the Irish Times.
Hongongalongalo poster from 2004 production
Singers moving about the theatre in HONGONGALONGALO
In 2006, George was awarded the Director’s Prize from Misha Rachlevsky of the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin for his composition, The Famine Dance, performed in both the Kremlin and Carnegie Hall. Maestro Rachlevsky has since commissioned another piece from George, entitled WVH, performed in June, 2007 in Moscow.
The Kremlin Chamber Ensemble performs The Famine Dance in Carnegie Hall. Nov, 2006
From 2005 - 2007, George was involved in the Tower Songs Project, run by the Dublin ,City Arts Centre,. This project seeks to artistically document the changes around Dublin, specifically in 5 sets of corporation flat tower complexes scheduled for demolition. His role in the project as a composer was to record audio samples on site in order to create compositions and performances inspired by them. In the 2006 performance, only days before the demolition of the last blocks of the old Fatima Mansions, he contributed the Fatimaphone: a hammer dulcimer he fashioned to model the flat complexes with built-in electronics, connected to 4 speakers made out of steel rubbish bins to be hoisted on pulleys to the top balconies of the flats as the audience moved about the courtyard.
George performs on the Fatimaphone under the scrutiny of Fatima residents
In 2005, George co-founded an experimental opera project, Glue Factory, which devises musical and visual performances inspired by the spaces they fill: derelict buildings, old factories, farms, houses and city streets. Audiences are asked to pass through these spaces following a simple set of instructions. Glue Factory has carried out work for a wide range of commissioning bodies, most recently the Butler Gallery for a performance in a derelict workhouse in Callan, Killkenny.
George performing with Glue Factory
For Glue Factory, George composed the Workhouse Sonata, for string trio and three voices, and the Brass Picnic, a large scale work for sixteen outdoor brass musicians which was nominated for the Spirit of the Fringe Award 2006. Currently, they are developing an installation for the Dublin Docklands in a disused diving bell on the south quay.
George was awarded an Arts Council Bursary in 2005 to research his compositional technique of asynchronous harmony. This research has permeated all of his work since.
Teacup speakers built for Storm in a Teacup performance
George has received the generous support of the Arts Council for his last 3 large scale projects.
The Electro Acoustic Exchange was a work for 8 hanging speakers, cello, commodities and sine waves, and was installed in the Project Arts Centre in July, 2007. To complete this project, George wrote a score based on a three-month-study of fluctuating commodity values around the world (please see short film on website). Audience members were free to wander amongst the hanging speakers, and even to push them as they listened and watched the sounds of fluctuating values.
The Electro Acoustic Exchange in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, July 2007
Grain jumps to the rhythm of its own value in The Electro Acoustic Exchange, July 2007
Bed of Macbeth, which was installed in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in October, 2008 involved a bed with a movie screen on its canopy, vibrating speakers in its mattress and audio speakers all around. One or two spectators could place a coin into a slot and lie in the bed to watch one of five films George composed based on the bedchamber relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
Watching the film in bed whose mattress vibrates the rhythm of Macbeth's doom, Bed of Macbeth in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, September, 2008
Inserting a coin into the bucket, and choosing one of the 5 scenes of music cinema. Bed of Macbeth, in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, September, 2008
Music for Modern Animals comprises three sculptures on Airfield Estate which function as hand-cranked music players. Each sculpture houses a separate part of a three movement composition for telegraph ensemble and livestock orchestra. The sounds used in the piece were recorded around Airfield Estate and use morse code performed by the composer.
A man and his children listen to Part One of Music for Modern Animals
using the hand crank to power the machine.
Head of Hamlet was a 2 week installation in the Project Arts Centre in December, 2009 which explored a new approach to Shakespeare's timeless character through sound, sculpture, light and vibrations.
Entering the space, the audience encountered a large mask suspended from the ceiling: a bizarre fusion of a theatre, helmet and cinema. The audience could stand inside the sculpture to witness the "theatre interior" of Hamlet's mind by watching mechanical images on the screen above them perform a unusual ballet to the music in 2 speakers around their heads and the percussive vibrations coming from the rear panel of the mask. The audience could also witness a different perspective, or the "theatre exterior" of Hamlet's mind, while wandering outside the head.
The film and sound were composed of animated images and sound samples recorded during the actual construction of the mask (mirroring the mechanics and electricity of Hamlet's mind), along with the voice of actor Deirdre Roycroft reading some of the Dane's greatest speeches. The piece was generously funded by the Arts Council's Project New Work Award.
Audience members witness the theatre exterior and interior of the Head of Hamlet
The Evolvaphone premiered on November 24th, 2009 in the Science Gallery, Trinity College.
The Evolvaphone is a booth which two people can enter via a curtain, input their initials using a telegraph key and state their initials into a mouthpiece. They will then witness a composition generated from this information according to the laws of natural selection.
The Pure Data algorithm was developed in consultation with Trinity College geneticist, Dr. Aoife McLysaght, and funded by the WELLCOME Trust, the Arts Council and the Science Gallery.
Dr. McLysaght reads about the Evolvaphone and genetics
The doctor enters the booth
Dr. McLysaght enters her initials and awaits evolution through music.
Over the years George has written some three hundred songs, several straight plays (In Case, Dog is Dead), performed as a musician for numerous bands in Dublin and San Francisco(Triple Piglet, The Moriarties), scored and orchestrated a film(Park , directed by John Carney and Tom Hall), written thousands of simple poems and acted in a number of television commercials (although he doesn't own a TV). He plays banjo, guitar, the singing hoses and works periodically as a choir director.