Read about Małgorzata Walentynowicz's recital at Music Current Festival 2025 in The Journal of Music [review]
- Monika Dalach Sayers
- May 23
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 11
Read the Brendan Finan's review for The Journal of Music of the final day of the Music Current Festival 2025 including Małgorzata Walentynowicz recital at Project Arts Centre in Dublin, Ireland. Walentynowicz performed the new revisited version of CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK for solo performer by Monika Dalach Sayers amongst works by Sarah Nemtsov and Mathias Monrad Møller:
"Before Fruits was CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK by the young Polish composer Monika Dalach Sayers, whom I first encountered at New Music Dublin’s Legato programme last month. There, her work Plastiglomerate(named for a new type of stone typified by its fusion with plastic) created a persistent pulse that stayed in the mind long after it had disintegrated in the music, and established Sayers as a consciously environmentalist composer. This work began with Walentynowicz hanging clothes on a laundry airer as images and words were displayed behind her – condemnations of fast fashion and the damage it causes – ‘I am wearing a freshwater reservoir from Central Asia.’ She then ate (or seemed, very convincingly, to eat) a plateful of fabrics – a commentary on microplastics in our own water supply, and thus in our diet – before discarding the layers of cheap extra clothes she was wearing, reading the text aloud herself, and finally taking her place at the piano. [...]
There was very little showy virtuosity throughout the performance. Walentynowicz’s technique is formidable, but the skills required by these works are subtle – timing precise to fractions of a second, even tone over minutes of repeated notes, crispness of sound.
With three environmentalist and anti-capitalist works, this concert hewed directly to what I often seek in art – and the works were well made, but difficult. An event like this can be draining, and I’ve found myself retroactively trying to pin some hope and positivity on my reaction. But the works shared a righteous anger and disgust at the conditions our world builds and hides – our society’s dark secrets from itself. I must be honest with myself: those emotions were central in my mind too as I left.
If there was positivity it was in the whole. After the last concert, I went home and said goodnight to my daughter (too old now to put to sleep with a song). Aspiya sings in The Mountain and the Maiden, unaccompanied and alone, but no less beautiful for that. As long as there are songs, there is hope, and as long as there are people, there will"
Link to the full review:
About CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK:
“Will you wear me today? Maybe tomorrow? The titular quote, from Monika Dalach Sayers’ CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK, highlights the fleeting nature of modern products. It is widely believed that the fashion industry is the second largest source of pollution in the world after the oil industry. We increasingly buy more clothes and throw away more of them. The “take-use-bin” model leads to huge amounts of waste, and the rapid mass production of clothes stimulates the culture of using and throwing away. Clothing is increasingly becoming disposable – we buy more often, and what we buy, we wear once. Instead of repairing, we throw away and buy new garments. We have forgotten how to take care of our belongings. As many as 85% of all textiles end up in landfills or are burned every year, and only 15% are recycled or go into second circulation. What price will we have to pay for impulsively satisfying the need to possess? is the question asked by Monika Dalach Sayers in the composition CARBON IS THE NEW BLACK for midi keyboard, playback and video. The title draws attention to the thoughtlessness of human actions that will become a liability to future generations.
