Dedicated to performing and commissioning new and experimental music, Larissa’s repertoire encompasses a wide range, from baroque to 20th century works and new compositions by some of today’s most exciting composers. With a musical practice encompassing solo, duet, chamber, symphony and opera orchestral playing, Larissa has worked with musicians, dancers, poets and visual designers. Interests in extended violin techniques and collaborative performance is at the forefront of her projects.
Notable solo and small team collaborative performances include:
The curation, project management and performance of Discord, with composer Sam Perkin and scultor Alex Pentek as part of Dublin Alive 2021 watch here. DISCORD is a musical performance in a newly created deployable, origami-inspired, concert stage that can change form and be skateboarded. The new artistic work, which blurs the line between performance and installation, is a musical performance which includes a new work for solo violin with an electronic element, performed in front the structure, along with the amplification of sounds of skateboarding on the wooden structure itself – finishing with skateboarders taking ownership of the structure as it is being compressed flat – using the structure as a skate prop to skate on and around.
Artist residency concert performance at The Dock Arts Centre, Ireland 2022 in a programme including Michael Gordon’s Tree-Oh with a new nature-inspired film and Sam Perkin new commission L@rissa. The solo violin programme with mixed-media inspires a new cohort of nature lovers to engage with nature on a local level at Lough Key Forest Park. Video footage, captured by filmmaker Nestor Romero Clemente during the residency, projected onto the stage during the performance of Michael Gordon’s piece for 3 violins ‘Tree-Oh’. The programme included a new work ‘L@rissa’ composed by award winning Irish composer Sam Perkin, for Real violin and Midi violin for solo violinist and pre-recorded electronic part.
Artist residency concert performance at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris 2023 with a programme including a self-composed soundpiece in a programme of work by contemporary Irish composers. During the residency Larissa recorded urban city sounds to take an audio snapshot of life in Paris, and layered her own violin over them as the voice of an observe to the city.
Solo concert of six commissions at the Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin 2023. Performance of six new works by CMC Composers for a special Sundays@Noon concert. Featuring a wide range of presentations from spoken work to animation, live and fixed electronics, microtonal writing conveying the chemical process of burning sugar, and a live field recordist recording and playing back the violin and sounds of a greater spotted woodpecker.Supported by an Arts Council Ireland commission award. These pieces were developed by the performer and composers as part of CMC’s Contemporary Artists Network, an initiative which facilitates new music collaborations.
Solo performance at Temple Bar Gallery Dublin mezzanine as part of Musictown Dublin 2022 in a programme of solo violin works by international contemporary composers.
Béal Festival Ireland ‘shadow once complete’ project tour with composer David Bremner – an ‘algorithmic storytelling’ piece combining algorithmic text, live electronics and lattice-based improvisation on violin
Recent mentorship includes study with violinists Jennifer Koh Mari Kimura, Mira Benjamin, Miranda Cuckson and Astrid Baumgardner and a Postgraduate Certificate course in Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University College Dublin.
Larissa plays a 2021 Christian Bayon violin, supported by Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Music Network is funded by The Arts Council.
LARISSA O'GRADY 