NEW CD RELEASE ON THE LYRIC LABEL 12th January 2010
Deirdre Gribbin: Venus Blazing
Volume 4 of the landmark Composers of Ireland series funded by RTÉ and
The Arts Council will be launched at a Horizons concert dedicated to her work in the National Concert Hall, Dublin on 12th January
Irish composer Deirdre Gribbin has been hailed as “a charismatic and intriguing new voice in contemporary music," Paul Conway The Independent. VENUS BLAZING is the first time three of her major orchestral works have been brought together on the one CD. Released on the RTÉ lyric fm label and performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra with Bradley Creswick, violin and conductor Gavin Moloney, the premiere of the title violin concerto was described by The Guardian as “less a terrestrial concert than an interplanetary event.”
Born in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles, Deirdre Gribbin admits that growing up in Belfast in the 1970s has influenced her work and that she continues to be conscious of the social, political and environmental world in which she writes her music. The awareness gained a particular resonance when her composition Unity of Being was premiered at and gave its name to a festival in New York in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
And yet she is no brute-realist. The third composition on this new release Empire States is a celebration of the Big Apple from all the potential of a Manhattan sunrise to the noise and pulse of a city at the centre of the Western World.
DEIRDRE GRIBBIN: VENUS BLAZING joins a growing stable of releases from
RTÉ lyric fm, a label that is getting critical acclaim from reviewers at home (The Sunday Business Post/ The Irish Times/ JMI) and abroad (Gramophone/ The American Record Guide/ The Strad/ Classical Music Magazine)
BIOGRAPHY
Award winning composer Deirdre Gribbin was born in Belfast. She is a Fulbright Fellow and studied at Princeton University USA, was a Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge and was recently appointed as Senior Fellow in Composition at Trinity Laban London
She has won a number of awards for her work including The Arts Foundation award for her widely acclaimed opera Hey Persephone!. Her string quartet What the Whaleship Saw was one of three nominations for the British Composer Award 2005.
Gribbin has been featured at Lincoin Center New York, CCNY New York with her orchestral work Unity of Being, and The Taipei and Presence Paris Festivals. In 2006 Goliath, her concerto for percussion and orchestra opened The Belfast Festival. Gribbin was featured in The Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today Series at The Royal Festival Hall in 2001. Her violin concerto Venus Blazing toured the UK with soloist Ernst Kovacic in 2004 with lighting by Bruce Springstein’s lighting designer Jeff Ravitz and was directed by Lou Stein.
She has received performances on BBC Radio 3, Radio France, and Almeida and Aldeburgh Festivals. She has written music for Richard Harris’ last film My Kingdom, which was nominated for a Screen International award. She works extensively in radio and has collaborated with director and writer Lou Stein on Embers starring Patrick Stewart and Dostoevsky’s The Possessed for BBC Radio 3. Gribbin was Artistic Director of the Society for the Promotion of New Music spnm from 2003-5 programming at The Tate Liverpool and National Film Theatre. She serves on the ISCM panel and is an advisor for The Fulbright programme.
She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway University London University and has been a visiting lecturer at Texas, Princeton and Berkeley Universities USA. In 2009 she was a keynote speaker talking about her work in a conference on ’Music and Morality’ at The institute of Education London.
In 2007 she completed commissions for The Philips Collection Washington DC, The City of London Festival and a new work for the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet 21st anniversary tour. In 2008 her second opera Crossing the Sea was premiered in London at Wilton’s Music Hall to critical acclaim. She was also commissioned to set Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney’s ‘Anahorish’ as a gift on his receiving a lifetime achievement award at Queen’s University Belfast.
Are you the dream catcher? will be premiered at London’s South Bank Centre in February 2010. She is currently writing a new opera and has been commissioned by RTE to write a piano concerto for Finghin Collins for the 2011-12 Season of concerts. Her website is at www.deirdregribbin.com |