ATÓG
BELFAST

Atóg is a live collaborative performance that explores the traditional Irish session; not simply how it sounds, but what it feels like to be part of one.

Atóg imagines what might happen if a session were stretched out and examined from different angles. Sound artists and musicians hold space for experimentation, supporting one another as they navigate a surreal soundscape. Participants are encouraged to unlearn protocol and relinquish control, building evolving layers by fragmenting, isolating and sampling melodies, and testing the boundaries of a living, breathing tradition.

Atóg leans into the unfamiliar, drawing on Hana’s own experience of learning to play trad as an adult exclusively through sessions. By embracing repetition, improvisation and collective problem-solving, the artists respond to one another in real time, allowing the music to develop and grow, rather than reproduce something predetermined through formal rehearsal.

Atóg reimagines the session outside its usual spaces, settings and schedules, creating an environment that feels comfortable, open and welcoming. The audience is arranged in a way that echoes a traditional session, allowing spectators to see one another as well as the performers, to create an intimate, immersive and shared experience.

Atóg amplifies the qualities that make a session open and participatory while questioning the conventions that can make it feel inaccessible. The work invites people in, regardless of their experience or background, exploring how traditional music can exist within a wider contemporary cultural landscape.

Hana Abri Smith is joined by Brendan Kerr, Cameron Clark, Catriona Ní Ghribín, Joshua Burnside, J SHIELDS and Neil Óg Martin.

Video by Neil Hainsworth

Upcoming Performance; Sound of Belfast Festival, The New Wave w/ Atóg & Gráinne Meyer