Cora Venus Lunny is a freelance improvising musician with a strong classical background and extensive experience in contemporary classical, improvised, recorded and folk musics. A violinist since early childhood, who performed around the world as a soloist and chamber musician before specialising in contemporary music, they have been exploring improvisation and composition for many years.
After releasing 1943, a self-produced EP of covers and originals, Cora’s 2nd album, Terminus Conscientiae, part of Diatribe’s Solo Series, was a spontaneously composed response to Bartok’s sonata for solo violin, “as much an exercise in textures and transposition as it is a display of safety net-free high-wire virtuosity“ (JMI) “ Fans of Bartók, contemporary string adventures and improvised music will find much to appreciate in Lunny’s highly personal, soul-searching endeavor” (allaboutjazz.com)
Since this time, free improvisation has become a very strong focus for Cora, and their duo with Izumi Kimura is one of their favourite projects of all time. In 2021, Folding was released on Farpoint Recordings, an album which Izumi Kimura and Cora collectively composed in response to Anthony Kelly’s recordings of Dun Laoghaire. This album has been warmly received by critics and musicians, and was chosen as one of the favourite 5 Jazz Albums of 2021 by The Ticket.
As a member of Yurodny, Cora has also written for them, and with Kate Ellis, was commissioned in 2016 to write a piece for Common Ground, relating to the 1916 commemorations. In 2020 Cora’s piece “Theft”, commissioned by the National String Quartet Foundation as part of their Beethoven Reflected Series, was premiered by the Ficino Quartet.
In 2021, Cora was awarded a Ban Bam Commission Award by IMC, to write Currents, a dramatic improvisation for four musicians. They created a text-based piece with four scenes
– Hope, Longing, Loss and Acceptance, which can be performed by any number of improvisers. They have begun a series of filmed, site-specific performances of the work with Izumi Kimura, Niwel Tsumbu and David Lacey – the first, by Inside Voice Productions, was filmed at the decommissioned Pigeon House power station in Dublin and premiered at the IFI in April 2022, and the second, by SOFFT Productions, took place at the pumphouse at Poulaphouca Hydroelectric Power Station and was screened at the Mermaid Arts Centre in June 2022.
In 2023, C V is in Research & Development generously supported by an Arts Council Bursary and a stellar crew of artists for a new improv-based project they are creating, working title RADIO.
