Hugh Lane Gallery Concert – Sunday 25th April, 12 pm Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano) and David Bremner (piano) Tarik O’Regan: Hold This City All Night Nadia Boulanger: Heures Ternes Soleils Couchants Samantha Fernando: Sissay Settings Nadia Boulanger: Le Beau Navire Soir d’Hiver Seoirse Bodley: Tuning in Rondo for Eamon A Star on the Eve Love-Song (all from his cycle ‘The Naked Flame’) Elizabeth Hilliard is a singer based in Dublin. She is widely regarded as an exceptional performer, and an imaginative and dramatic communicator, of new music. She works in close collaboration with Christopher Fox, Jennifer Walshe, Gráinne Mulvey and David Bremner, and is considered an authoritative interpreter of their vocal music. She has been supported in her career with bursaries and residencies from the Arts Council / An Comhairle Ealaíon, Creative Ireland, South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Current projects include a collaboration with Louise Manifold (video artist), they most recently developed a video installation The Escape Wheel, a work based on the performance, mechanism, design and action of Jacques-Droz Automata (exhibited at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon and Depo, Istanbul) an algorithmic screen-share text improv collaboration and an experimental opera, Slow Recognition, both with composer David Bremner, and development of scenes by composer Evangelia Rigaki with text by Marina Carr as part of the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland CMC Colleagues scheme. 2021 performances include the world premiere of Gráinne Mulvey’s Great Women at the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival (June 2021); St. Brigid's Day 2021 celebration presented by CMC and Irish Embassy, Hungary performing Gráinne Mulvey’s Carlow Song-Cycle with guitarist Anselm McDonnell (February 2021); a song recital with pianist David Bremner for the Finding A Voice Festival featuring songs by Nadia Boulanger and Rhona Clarke (March 2021); a solo live-stream recital featuring works by Enno Poppe, Chaya Czernowin, Steven Daverson and Os Ard, the Irish language version of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate collected in Jennifer Walshe’s aisteach.org archive (July 2021). Highlights of her career to date include: An invitation to London with the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland to perform in both The Irish Embassy in London and Cafe OTO for the 2018 launch of CMC’s promotional album new music::new Ireland three, presentation of and musical director of Béal 2016, a 2-day festival of the unaccompanied vocal-ensemble music by Jennifer Walshe, including the Irish premiere of much of her music and a newly-commissioned work. Her debut album Sea to the West in 2016 was acclaimed by Colin Clarke in Fanfare Archive as 'a highly specialized but massively rewarding disc’. She performed in Jennifer Walshe's Ireland: A Dataset in the Imagining Ireland series live-streamed by the National Concert Hall of Ireland, which was highlighted by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as one of the Top 10 Performances of 2020. www.elizabethhilliard.com David Bremner is a pianist, composer and organist based in Dublin. Originally from West Cumbria, UK, he moved to Ireland in 1999. He has studied piano with Mary Lennon, and organ with David Sanger and Mark Duley. David has performed with many of Dublin’s leading ensembles, including the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Crash Ensemble. From 2010 to 2019 he was Assistant Organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. In 2013 he completed a Ph.D in Composition with Gráinne Mulvey at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (now TU Dublin Conservatoire), where he now lectures in Composition. He gives recitals regularly, both as a soloist, and as a duo with soprano Elizabeth Hilliard. In 2013-16 he performed in three series mounted by the Association of Irish Composers. Other recent performances include Sonic Vigil, Temple Bar TradFest, and Dún Laoghaire Organ Concerts. David co-directs the music/text production company Béal, and is active as a composer; recent projects include a work for Crash Ensemble, a cantata on the theme of the four seasons, and a duo for Elizabeth Hilliard and Lina Andonovska. www.davidbremner.net Tarik O’Regan 2020/21 sees the release of three albums of O’Regan’s compositions: Pentatone brings out Houston Grand Opera’s production of The Phoenix, in which Thomas Hampson and Luca Pisaroni both interpret the role of Lorenzo Da Ponte; on Naxos, Chamber Choir Ireland and the Irish Chamber Orchestra perform A Letter of Rights, a large-scale collaboration with Alice Goodman which meditates on the civil rights enshrined in Magna Carta; and All Things Common is a portrait album by Pacific Chorale on the Yarlung label. He is currently working on a saxophone concerto, which has been commissioned for soloist Amy Dickson by the Presteigne Festival to be premiered in 2022. Born in 1978, Tarik O’Regan has worked with a wide variety of ensembles and organizations; these include the Dutch National Ballet, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House in London. His output, recognized with two GRAMMY® nominations and two British Composer Awards, has been recorded on over 40 albums and is published exclusively by Novello. O’Regan also holds the positions of Visiting Artist at Stanford University and Artistic Partner with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. www.tarikoregan.com Samantha Fernando Samantha (b.1984) has worked with numerous ensembles including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Riot Ensemble, the choir of Selwyn College Cambridge, LOD Muziektheater (Ghent), Silbersee Vocal Ensemble (Amsterdam) and The London Sinfonietta. Her music has been performed at festivals here and abroad such as Aldeburgh Music, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sounds New, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, York Late Music, Lake District Summer Music and The Oxford Lieder Festival. In 2013, she was awarded an RPS Composition Prize and was commissioned to write a new work for the Philharmonia Orchestra as part of the Music of Today series. Samantha’s music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and her flute piece Kinesphere was released on NMC last year. Last year she was commissioned to write a new work celebrating the 50th birthday of the London Sinfonietta, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in January 2018 and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. In June 2018, her music was showcased in a portrait concert at Kettle’s Yard Cambridge. In 2019 her work Formations was choreographed by Kristen McNally and performed by the Royal Ballet in a showcase of new dance at the Linbury Theatre, ROH. Breathing Space for symphony orchestra was premiered by the Philharmonia Orchestra in Spring 2019, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. Recent commissions include a new work for the BBC Singers and a hyper VR opera, directed by Netia Jones, designed by Jo Scotcher and produced by the Royal Opera House and Figment Productions. Samantha is a 2021 Arts Foundation Finalist. www.samanthafernando.com Seoirse Bodley Seóirse Bodley was born in Dublin in 1933. Studies in Ireland and Germany led to a teaching appointment at University College Dublin, where he was awarded the degree of D. Mus. He is currently Emeritus Professor in the music department there. Influences on his compositions include a range of musical styles from the European avant-garde to Irish traditional music. His works include five symphonies for full orchestra, two chamber symphonies and numerous orchestral, choral, vocal and chamber pieces. The many commissions he has received include his Third Symphony, commissioned for the opening of the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and his Fourth Symphony, commissioned by the Arturo Toscanini Symphony Orchestra of Parma, Italy. In addition to many performances in Ireland, his music has been broadcast and performed in North America, many European countries, Australia and China. Awards include the Arts Council Prize for Composition, a Travelling Studentship of the National University of Ireland, the Macaulay Fellowship in Music Composition and the Marten Toonder Award. In 2008 Seóirse Bodley was elected a Saoi of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists. Nadia Boulanger Nadia Boulanger (1887 – 1979) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were those who became leading composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Eliot Carter, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Astor Piazzolla. Boulanger taught in the US and England, working with music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92. Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and EuropeShe conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky. Hold this city all night (texts by Alice Goodman) I. To Peter, who is painting a map of the world The day turns as it did from five o’clock Sunday when light built angles on your wall corn blades clicked on the fire escape wind bent all Boston’s roses To seven in June, the hour that is so much ike you. Air cuts through buildings and thickens. The grass’s bristling shadow Is stronger than the body of a man.