A collective of Irish percussionists, playing everything from huge shows that fill the stage with instruments to intimate concerts, school workshops and street performances.
I founded Bangers and Crash and direct the group. It's a collective rather than a fixed band: depending on the project, we're anything from a duo to a sextet with a stage full of instruments, sometimes joined by singers, composers or a crowd of young musicians.
It all started organically. Our first outings were school workshops for West Cork Music, with Clare O'Keeffe and Caitríona Frost, and among our first important concerts were my Rising Stars concert at the National Concert Hall in February 2015 and WoodMetalWater at the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival in Cork later that year.
Our aim is to use the huge range of sounds and the magic of percussion to open doors, and to make music fun and open to everyone. We play new music, much of it written for us, alongside classics of the percussion repertoire by composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Louis Andriessen, John Cage and Thierry de Mey. We've played at festivals from Body&Soul to the Cork Midsummer Festival and New Music Dublin, and toured Ireland with Music Network in 2019 and with the support of the Arts Council in 2024. We also recorded percussion for Arthur Sharpe's Ivor Novello-winning score for the BBC One drama The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies.
Short film
Bangers and Crash: An Immersive Experience
A short film about our 2024 project in Limerick, part of that year's tour, where we worked with music students from the area and the composer Brian Irvine.
Filmed and edited by Jack Deacon (Plural Video), with Sound Waves Music Space. Supported by the Arts Council.
-
Bangers and Crash prove a reliably cohesive and entertaining ensemble… If they come to your town, seek them out.
-
As well as the banging and crashing the group's name suggests, we also get subtle moods and textures… Energising and enjoyable.
-
…buried by the raw power and immediacy of live percussion.
Highlights
-
2025
- Irene and Linda Buckley's score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis at the Glasgow Cathedral Festival, played by Paddy Nolan and Patrick Lynch.
- A duo concert for Music for Wexford, with Caitríona Frost.
-
2024
- An autumn tour of Ireland, supported by the Arts Council: the Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick; the Everyman, Cork; VISUAL, Carlow; and the Black Box, Galway. We premiered Brian Irvine's participatory piece CALL [I am] here! and my own Up (Sextet No. 2), with young local musicians joining us on stage in each city.
- A gong-bath style duo performance at Fuddlefest, Co. Wexford.
-
2023
- Arthur Sharpe's score for the BBC One drama The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies was released on Silva Screen Records, with percussion we recorded for it in Cork. It won the 2024 Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack.
- Duo concerts at the National Concert Hall, the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.
-
2022
- Our sextet programme at PIMA! Fest in Ennis, joined by students from Music Generation Clare.
-
2021
- Three new pieces for percussion sextet, by Amanda Feery, Tom Lane and me, performed outdoors at Elizabeth Fort for the Cork Midsummer Festival.
- Irene and Linda Buckley's new score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, played live with the film at the Everyman for the Cork International Film Festival.
- A concert and workshop at the Birr Festival of Music.
-
2020
- How Aria? with Irish National Opera for the First Fortnight festival in Dublin, with the singers Bríd Ní Ghruagáin and Dominica Williams: the premiere of Amanda Feery's As above, so below, and Christopher Cerrone's Goldbeater's Skin.
-
2019
- An eight-date Music Network tour, from the Sugar Club in Dublin to glór in Ennis, with workshops along the way and the premiere of my Cross | Paths, written for the tour.
-
2017
- John Cage's Living Room Music, with Aoife Ní Bhriain, at New Music Dublin in the National Concert Hall, as part of the Kaleidoscope Night series.
-
2016
- The Woodlands Stage at Body&Soul, Westport Arts Festival and the Killaloe Chamber Music Festival.
-
2015
- WoodMetalWater at the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival in Cork, with Clare O'Keeffe joining us: music by Steve Reich and Louis Andriessen, and the premiere of my Water Drumming.
- My Rising Stars concert at the National Concert Hall on 17 February, with Chris Stynes, Maeve O'Hara and Caitríona Frost, including Nebojša Živković's Trio per uno and Nigel Westlake's Omphalo Centric Lecture.
- Thierry de Mey's Musique de Table at Cork's first Quarter Block Party.
-
2014
- Where it began: school workshops for West Cork Music's Tuning Up, with Clare O'Keeffe and Caitríona Frost.
Videos
Our YouTube channel
Play video: Up (Sextet No. 2) – Alex Petcu
Play video: Sextet No. 1 – Alex Petcu
Play video: Tower of Pigeons – Amanda Feery
Play video: Rotations – Tom Lane
Play video: Musique de Table – Thierry de Mey
Play video: Water Drumming – Alex Petcu
On record
In 2022 we recorded percussion for Arthur Sharpe's score for the BBC One drama The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies, which won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack in 2024. In the words of its label, Silva Screen Records, it's “an amalgam of harpsichords, harps, strings and marimbas driven along by the beats of the Bangers & Crash percussion group”.
More of our music is on SoundCloud.
Workshops for schools
Our workshops are fun and hands-on, and we tailor them to any age group. Pupils meet more than 30 instruments from all over the world and learn where they come from, use their own bodies as percussion instruments, hear how percussion works in the orchestra and in film and cartoon music, and learn the basics of playing together through games and exercises.
We've given well over 100 workshops in schools. Since 2014, two of us have regularly spent a week each January visiting ten schools in Co. Cork for Tuning Up, West Cork Music's outreach programme with Cork County Council's Arts Office, sometimes with a short story we commissioned from the Cork author Cethan Leahy to show off the sound effects percussionists are called on to create. We've also worked with Music Generation Clare, Sound Waves Music Space in Limerick and Common Ground in Inchicore, Dublin, and given workshops at festivals from Westport to Killaloe and Bantry.
“The group showed us a wide variety of percussion instruments and played beautiful sounds and music for us. Percussion instruments were explained and there was direct participation by the children, a lovely time was had by all.”
Presentation Primary School, Bandon
The players
Bangers and Crash draws on a pool of percussionists from around Ireland:
- Emma King
- Caitríona Frost
- Pat Lynch
- Brian Dungan
- John Rousseau-Parlane
- Paddy Nolan
- Maeve O'Hara
- Chris Stynes
- Kevin Power
- Clare O'Keeffe
- Alex Petcu (director)
Bring Bangers and Crash to your festival, venue or school
From a duo in a small room to a stage full of instruments, we'll put together a programme that suits the space and the audience.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and SoundCloud.