The commissioning and performance of music by living composers is an essential part of our annual festival.
New Music at the 2024 Winter Chamber Music Festival
This year GlasDrum and The Fidelio Trio are delighted present the world premiere of Richard Causton’s new piano trio If I Could Tell You. The festival will also feature another premiere in the first Irish performance of Ailís Ní Ríain Born unfixed to bend and break and leave behind, commissioned by Fidelio Trio and premiered in January at Dark Music Days, Iceland.
In addition to these exciting premieres, the opening concert on Friday November 22nd, They Danced While the Musicians Played, will showcase newly composed works for Uilleann Pipes and Piano Trio. These boundary-breaking pieces are inspired by the evocative portraits of traditional musicians by Irish artist John B. Vallely. Featuring compositions by Niall Vallely, Irene Buckley, and David Fennessy, this concert will celebrate the rich intersection of traditional Irish music and contemporary classical forms. Audiences will also hear Crispy! and Fidelio Unsung, two works dedicated to the Fidelio Trio by the late Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, and works by renowned composers Shaun Davey, Neil Martin, Henry Cowell and Joan Trimble.
Richard Causton
Richard Causton has been described as ‘one of the most courageous and uncompromising artists working today’. Following studies in Milan with Franco Donatoni and in London with Jeremy Dale Roberts, he has worked internationally with a number of leading artists at venues including the Lincoln Center in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the South Bank Centre in London. Causton has collaborated with ensembles including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Britten Sinfonia and the Nash Ensemble. His work is recorded on labels such as Metier, Delphian, Orchid, Regent and NMC, whose portrait disc – Millennium Scenes NMC D192 – was listed as ‘Outstanding’ in International Record Review and was No.1 in the Sunday Times‘ 100 Best Records of the Year (Contemporary Music section). He has been the recipient of awards including a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, a British Composer Award and First Prize at the Third International ‘Nuove Sincronie’ Composition Competition.
Causton’s works often engage with political themes (as in Millennium Scenes and The Flight, a setting of a specially-written poem by George Szirtes for the ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols’ at King’s College, Cambridge), and his search for new sounds has on occasion led him to build a new instrument or seek out a new playing technique. His works also include a Nocturne for 21 Pianos (commissioned by the City of London Festival), and a Concerto for Percussion and Gamelan (commissioned for Dame Evelyn Glennie by the Cheltenham Festival).
Recent pieces include Ik zeg: NU (2019) which was premiered by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre to critical acclaim: ‘Now-ness and then-ness move in parallel in this spacious, beautifully constructed work’ (Anna Picard, The Times) ‘…holds two timeframes in play simultaneously, and brilliantly’ (Erica Jeal, The Guardian). It was one of just two works selected by the BBC to represent the UK at the International Rostrum of Composers, and has now been broadcast in dozens of countries worldwide.
In addition to composition, Causton occasionally writes and lectures on Italian contemporary music and also broadcasts for Italian radio (RAI Radio 3).
He is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Patron of the Centre for Young Musicians. Richard Causton’s music is represented by Cathy Nelson Artists and Projects.
Ailís Ní Ríain
Ailís Ní Ríain* is an Irish composer and writer. Her work has been commissioned and performed worldwide. Her artistic interests are diverse and combined with an unwavering desire to push and develop her artistic practice through each new project or commission.
In 2016 she was awarded the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers. Her Debut Disc portrait album was released by NMC Recordings in 2023 and received many favourable reviews.
Ailís works broadly in the areas of concert music, music installation and music-theatre and has collaborated with writers, dancers, visual artists and theatre artists.
Ailís is deaf/hard of hearing and some of her work has referenced these themes working with DadaFest, Unlimited, Arts & Disability Ireland, Shape Arts, Drake Music and Outside In. She is a long-time advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion in the arts and a board member of Disability Arts Online. In 2021 she became a board director of the Ivors Academy.
Recent projects include a commission for Dame Evelyn Glennie and the New London Chamber Ensemble, the BBC Philharmonic, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, RTÉ ConTempo String Quartet, Wired a full-length disabled-dance-theatre production in Chicago, London Sinfonietta, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
She has been awarded international fellowships, associate artist positions and residences at Yaddo, USA, the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, The Ragdale Foundation in Illinois, ArtOMI in New York and Bogliasco in Italy.
Arts and heritage, public art and site-specific and immersive music installation have been part of Ní Ríain’s practice since her first site-responsive work for a derelict cotton mill in Manchester in 2006.
Embedding contemporary music in unexpected settings, creating resonance and atmosphere through a combination of music, history, architecture and community are key touchpoints of her vision. Site-specific music-installations include a lighthouse, a K6 telephone box, a dis-used former cotton mill, the Brontë’s family home, a castle keep, a railway station accumulator tower and a high-street shop unit.
As a writer of words for stage, Ailís work is published by Nick Hern and Bloomsbury and has been translated into French, German and Swedish and produced in Ireland, UK, New York, Germany and Sweden. Her work in French is represented by L’Arche
Ailís is grateful to the Irish Arts Council, the PRS Foundation, Unlimited, Arts Council England, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the RVW Trust and the Hinrichsen Foundation for supporting her work.
*Pronounced A-leesh Knee Ree-in