The commissioning and performance of music by living composers is an essential part of our annual festival.
New Music at the 2026 Winter Chamber Music Festival
.The Fidelio Trio's renowned championing of new music, particularly the large body of work by Irish composers they have commissioned and performed internationally, is unsurpassed by any other chamber ensemble in Ireland. This track record continues to form a central focus of this years festival, with a world premiere performance of a new work by Irish composer Gráinne Mulvey, the second performance of 'Samhain' by Northern Irish composer Frank Lyons, and a new work by leading Cypriot composer Evis Sammoutis.
Donnacha Dennehy
Called “thrilling” by The Guardian, and “arrestingly beautiful” by the New Yorker, Donnacha Dennehy’s music has featured in festivals and venues such as the Berliner Festspiele, Edinburgh International Festival; Carnegie Hall (which has co-commissioned three works); Barbican, London; Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam; Wigmore Hall, London; Royal Opera House, London; BAM, New York; St. Ann’s Warehouse; Tanglewood Festival; Holland Festival; Kennedy Center; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; Dublin Theatre Festival; ISCM World Music Days; Bang On A Can; Ultima Festival, Oslo; Musica Viva, Lisbon; Saarbrucken Festival; and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival.
His music has been premiered and commissioned by groups and soloists including Alarm Will Sound, Augustin Hadelich, Bang On A Can, Contact, Crash Ensemble, Dawn Upshaw, Doric String Quartet, Fidelio Trio, Joanna MacGregor, Kronos Quartet, Icebreaker, LA Philharmonic, Nadia Sirota, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Oregon Symphony, Orkest de Volharding, Percussion Group of the Hague, philharmonie zuidnederland, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, So Percussion, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Third Coast Percussion, Ulster Orchestra (BBC), and United Instruments of Lucilin (Luxembourg). Collaborations include pieces with the writers Colm Tóibín (The Dark Places), the director Tom Creed (The Hunger, stage version) and Enda Walsh (a trilogy of operas).
Returning to Ireland after studies abroad, principally at the University of Illinois, Dennehy founded Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s now-renowned new music group, in 1997. Alongside the singers Dawn Upshaw and Iarla O’Lionáird, Crash Ensemble features on the debut 2011 Nonesuch release of Dennehy’s music, entitled Grá agus Bás. Other releases include a second portrait disc by Nonesuch (The Hunger, 2019), a number by NMC Records in London, Bedroom Community in Reykjavik and New Amsterdam and Cantaloupe in New York. Nonesuch are releasing a third portrait CD, Land of Winter, in November 2024.
Dennehy’s single-movement orchestral piece Crane was ‘recommended’ by the International Rostrum of Composers (2010). In 2017, he won the FEDORA-Generali Prize for Opera (Salzburg/Paris), and in 2021 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2024 he won a Koussevitsky commission. He now lives in America and is a professor of music at Princeton University. His music is published by G. Schirmer in New York.
Frank Lyons
Frank Lyons MBE is Professor of Music and Associate Dean of Research and Impact in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Ulster University. He has developed an international profile as a composer and researcher with over 150 performances and exhibitions of his works having been given in China, Japan, Australia, South Africa, the US, Europe, the UK and Ireland and broadcast on BBC, RTE, NPR and ABCFM by some of the world’s leading soloists and ensembles.
In 2010 he was awarded the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Art Prize with media artist Masaki Fujihata for their interactive installation piece Simultaneous Echoes which has been exhibited in Canada, Germany, Japan and Poland. His intermedia piece The River Still Sings, co-commissioned by the City of London Festival and Derry~Londonderry City of Culture 2013, was premiered by the Fidelio Trio in June 2013. His groundbreaking piece, NonZeroSum for inclusive ensemble was performed across Europe in 2017 to widespread acclaim.
He has developed an international network of research collaborations in the field of creative technologies and disability under the ‘Inclusive Creativity’ banner; this work was rated as ‘world-leading’ in the recent research assessment exercise REF2014.
Frank recently co-ordinated the successful Future Screens NI bid to AHRC Creative Industries Clusters programme which secured funding of £13million to support development of creative industries in Northern Ireland.
Frank is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Deirdre McKay
From rural County Down, Deirdre’s work has been performed at London’s Southbank, The Wigmore Hall, The Phillips Collection, Washington, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, Orléans Concours International, Gothenburg International Chamber Music Festival, National Concert Hall, Dublin, The National Sawdust, Brooklyn, Symphony Space and Carnegie Hall, New York.
Recipient of a Director’s Choice Award from Boston Metro Opera’s International Composers’ Competition and an Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award, Deirdre received a coveted Paul Hamlyn Composer Award, London, in 2018. Deirdre’s work represented Ireland at the 2023 International Society for Contemporary Music World New Music Days, Cape Town, South Africa. Previously her work was selected by BASCA from a Europe-wide call for performance with the BBC Singers at St Giles', Cripplegate, and for performances at the International Association of Music Information Centres world gatherings in New York and Ireland.
Recent performances include the triptych response to Heaney's The Midnight Verdict, with Benoît Sitzia and Gregory Vajda, performed by Ensemble Ars Nova, Farnaz Modarresifar & Katalin Koltaï, Theatre Auditorium, Poitiers; performances of her Dublin International Piano Competition commission, Ash, given by Danny Driver at Oxford’s Holywell Music Room, Smorgaschord Festival; Litany to the Magdalene Dead and Nora, commissioned and performed by Deirdre Brenner with Lotte Betts-Dean at The Oxford International Song Festival and West Cork Chamber Music Festival; a setting Seamus Heaney’s The Owl, for The Fidelio Trio and soprano Daire Halpin in a GlasDrum Winter Chamber Music Festival commission; an Irish tour of Meltwater, with Richard Egarr and the Irish Chamber Orchestra and performances by pianist Andrew Zolinsky in Dublin, London, Spain and at the Dark Music Days Festival, Reykjavík.
Previous commissions and performances have included works for Northern Ireland Opera, State Choir Latvija for Louth Contemporary Music's Baltic Music in Ireland Festival with Arvo Pärt, BBC Singers, Chamber Choir Ireland, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Boston Firebird Ensemble, Norwegian Vertavo, Swiss Terpsycordes, Vanbrugh and RTÉ Con Tempo string quartets, Access Contemporary Music Chicago, New Music Dublin, Sound Festival, Aberdeen, RTÉ’s Composing the Island and Living Music Festivals; Musici Ireland, Dutch violist Elisabeth Smalt, Calefax Reed Quintet, Finnish pianist Antti Siirala, Chloë Hanslip & Danny Driver, Darragh Morgan & Mary Dullea, Mairéad Hickey & Fiachra Garvey, Dušica Mladenović & Ian Wilson, Catherine Leonard & Hugh Tinney, Tasmin Little & Martin Roscoe, Ruth Morley & Laura Bowler, Clíona Doris, Robin Tritschler, Concorde and the Crash Ensemble. Former Composer in Association to the Northern Sinfonia’s Young Sinfonia, Deirdre was the featured composer at the Chamber Music on Valentia Festival, 2020.
Collaborative partnerships have included new work with visual artist Jean Duncan for the Old Museum Arts Centre and Naughton Gallery, Belfast, and Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin, and the creation of an opera short for Northern Ireland Opera on the life of Blair Mayne, with writer/ actor Richard Dormer. Previous collaborations include work with poets Kate Newmann, Damian Smyth and Maria McManus, as well as choral and ensemble settings of both Beckett and Heaney. Her work has been incorporated by filmmaker Des Bell into three films, featuring at the Venice Film Festival, Dublin International Film Festival and Montreal World Film Festival. Deirdre was awarded a British Academy Award for her Masters in Composition at The University of Manchester and completed her composition doctorate at Queen’s University, Belfast, with Piers Hellawell. Living in Dublin, Deirdre studied privately with Kevin Volans.
Her music has been released on the Lorelt, Diatribe, Métier and RTÉ Lyric FM labels and broadcast by BBC Radio 3, RTÉ, Deutschlandradio Kultur and New York's WNYC and WQXR.
EVIS SAMMOUTIS
Evis Sammoutis' works have been commissioned by festivals and organizations, such as Venice Biennale, Klangspuren, Royaumont, Barlow Endowment, Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Chamber Music America, New Music USA and Internationaler Musikwettbewerb der ARD München. His music was performed in more than 45 countries around the world, at leading festivals and contemporary music series, such as Tanglewood, MusicNOW, Gaudeamus, Music of Today and ISCM, and broadcast on several international radio stations, such as BBC Radio 3, SWR2, Radio France and RAI3. Evis has received numerous accolades and over 40 compositional awards, prizes and scholarships as well as recognition at competitions, including the Royal Philharmonic Society Award (England), the Irino Prize (Japan) and the Franz Liszt Scholarship (Germany); first prizes at the Andres Segovia (Spain), Look and Listen (USA) and Dundee (Scotland) competitions; second prizes at Concours Dutilleux (France), Jurgenson (Russia), Y.A Papaioannou (Greece), Leo Brouwer (USA) and Samobor (Croatia) competitions; special prize at the Fifth Annual Composition Contest of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music (USA); an honorable mention at the IMRO Composers Competition (Ireland); a DAAD Research Fellowship (Germany) and a Fulbright Scholarship for Advanced Research (USA). He was very recently awarded a distinguished senior research fellowship from GATES International Excellence in the Humanities Program at la Maison de la Création et de l'Innovation, Université Grenoble Alpes, France, and he will be a visiting fellow at St. Cross College, University of Oxford in 2025. Performers include leading ensembles and specialists in new music such as the Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Neue Vocalsolisten, the Arditti, Kreutzer, KAIROS, Doelen, Zephyr and Prometeo String Quartets, Ensemble Nomad, Ensemble Aleph, EXAUDI, Het Collectief, New York Woodwind Quintet, Arirang and Chantily Quintets, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Endymion and members ofPhilharmonia Orchestra. Orchestras include the London Symphony Orchestra, Holland Symfonia, the Orchestra of Opera North and the Athens Symphony Orchestra, and soloists include Peter Sheppard Skaerved, David Alberman, Uli Fussenegger, Alan Thomas, Movses Pogossian, Rohan de Saram, Sarah Leonard, Julian Warburton, Adrian Spillett and John Potter, to name a few. Conductors include Christoph Poppen, Elgar Howarth, Kasper de Roo and Franck Ollu, among others. Evis is Associate Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and he is also the Co-founder and Artistic Director of the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, now in its 16th season. His catalogue includes over 60 works scored for various combinations, and since 2013, all his works are published exclusively by the University of York Music Press, where Evis is a House Composer. His first monographic album will be released on the KAIROS label in Spring 2025. He was born in Cyprus in 1979, where he had his first musical lessons at the age of 6. By the age of 16, he had already obtained both the LRSM and the Performance and Teaching Diploma with distinction before moving to England in 1998 for university studies. Upon graduation from the University of Hull with a first-class degree (BMus) in all disciplines and the Departmental Prize, he completed his PhD studies in Musical Composition at the University of York in 2006. Evis has also furthered his studies at worldrenowned festivals, seminars, and workshops, including Darmstadt, IRCAM, Royaumont and Tanglewood as a composition fellow, where he studied with leading composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Georges Aperghis and George Benjamin. Following his PhD studies, Evis was awarded a Wingate Foundation Scholarship (2005–2007) to pursue his compositional research more independently, whilst teaching Composition and Orchestration at Nottingham University (2005–2007) and guitar performance at York University (2002–2007). Evis also taught composition at Hull University in 2006. He subsequently served as Assistant and then as Associate Professor in Music Composition and Theory at European University Cyprus (until 2016), having also served as scientific collaborator to the same institution prior to this appointment, and then as Associate Professor of Composition and Director of the Electronic Music Studios at Ithaca College, NY, where he spent 7 years