2002 was a year of firsts for contemporary Irish music: Dublin witnessed its first international dance festival, there was the first collaborative festival with the Nordic countries, Up North! and the first Canadian-Irish festival, Voyages: Dublin-Montreal took place. Indeed, looking back at 2002, Irish composers have been increasingly featured in high-profile projects and festivals. New works have emerged from many of these events, very often brought to fruition independent of a commissioning body or organisation.

The databases of the Contemporary Music Centre documented just over one hundred premieres taking place in 2002. The first of the year was the premiere of Siobhán Cleary's Alchemy, an 18-minute work for the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland commissioned by RTÉ. Elaine Agnew's piece, The Moon, commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra with funds provided by the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon is part of a collaborative work with movements by Fergus Johnston, Ian Wilson, Jennifer Walshe and Raymond Deane entitled The Song of Wandering Aengus, which was premiered at the Killaloe Music Festival, Co. Clare during the summer. Elaine Agnew's involvement with educational projects resulted in another new piece, Jack in the Box, commissioned by the National School Band Association for the NSBA Derry Wind Festival 2002.

There are many other new educational works in CMC. Rhona Clarke's Mo Pháistín Fionn was written for Marjorie Moran and the choir of Loreto Secondary School, Fermoy, and Marian Ingoldsby has written a new opera for children, Lily's Labyrinth. This was premiered at the Waterford New Music Festival in January 2003 by the staff and students of Waterford Institute of Technology Music School with conductor Brian Brown.

Opera is also the medium in which the young composer Jürgen Simpson and librettist Simon Doyle realised their project, Thwaite. This was one of three works selected against strong competition by the Genesis Opera Project in the UK and will be premiered at London's Almeida Opera Festival and the Aldeburgh Festival in 2003.

James Wilson, the doyen of Irish contemporary music, and Gerald Barry were both busy attending birthday tribute concerts during 2002. It was James Wilson's eightieth birthday in September and the occasion was marked by concerts during the 'Mostly Modern' series, the Up North! festival and a Concorde tribute concert at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. Concorde performed the premiere of Enjoying, 'a conversation (piece) between soprano and flute, reflecting the words of John Gracen Brown'. At the National Concert Hall in September, Conor Biggs and Pádhraic Ó Cuinneagáin played Wilson's First Frost, a song cycle set to seven poems of Kevin Nichols.

Gerald Barry celebrated his fiftieth birthday in April last year. This was marked by the premiere of Dead March by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Barry has always had a fondness for Marches: 'I have always loved marches...when bands approach I rush to the street, and when they recede I collapse in a pleasant fever'. His birthday was also marked with a first staged performance of his opera, The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit, and with the premiere of the second act of his third opera, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. The energetic and thrilling Wiener Blut was premiered in the National Concert Hall with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and conductor Rumon Gamba. This work 'includes sounds remembered from the time when I discovered music until now. They act as a diary in which each entry is a jolt to memory', the composer commented. Barry was also featured in several high-profile festivals including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Aldeburgh Festival.

The Crash Ensemble's commitment to new Irish music since its formation in 1997 was further realised with the Up North! festival last December where the group, in collaboration with the Network North organization of the Nordic Music Council featured some thirteen world premieres, six of which were by Irish composers, including Donnacha Dennehy's Glamour Sleeper, premiered by Contemporánea. The work, the composer says, 'simply is itself...when working the piece out I called each section after a particular area in Dublin, so you had the Rialto Hocket, the Inchicore Drag -- all places where myself and the missus went house-hunting. Maybe there is a relation to its title. Ultimately, however, the music and its corners play off each other, even to my surprise'.

The National Chamber Choir's new artistic director and chief conductor Celso Antunes directed Stephen Gardner's Supremum est Mortalibus, commissioned by the NCC. The Cologne-based Antunes took over direction of the choir from composer Colin Mawby, many of whose popular choral works are in the CMC library.

Several new ensembles have presented contemporary music over the last year, among them the HUUJ Ensemble which was formed by the composer Ian Wilson in 2001. Frank Lyons' work, Go Between, was played by the HUUJ Ensemble (the new music group of the University of Ulster at Jordanstown) at the Hugh Lane Gallery in December.

New additions to the Contemporary Music Centre's library last year highlight the growing interest in music technology. Roger Doyle's new work, Passades, was commissioned by Concerts-M Montreal for the Voyages festival, which took place in Montreal. Young composer Judith Ring's musique concrète work, Accumulation, was added to her repertoire at CMC. Newly registered composers Damien Harron, Andrew Purcell, Fergal Carroll, Eunan McCreesh, Paul Wilson, Simon Mawhinney, Rachel Holstead, Ricardo Climent and Andrew Hamilton also lodged works in CMC for the first time. Andrew Hamilton and fellow Northern Ireland composer Deirdre McKay was featured in the RTÉ Living Music festival under the artistic directorship of composer Raymond Deane.

The range of recordings available in the CMC sound archive is very extensive. It includes, for instance, the latest Michael Ball CD (which featured as CMC 'CD of the Month' in January 2003) with his brass music performed by the inimitable Black Dyke Band conducted by Nicholas J. Childs. Other recordings originated from projects during the year which highlighted Irish music, such the Soundshapes collaborative partnership between composers, performers, craft workers and sculptors at the Galway Arts Festival, and the Canadian Voyages: Dublin-Montreal festival. Other festival recordings now in the sound archive include those from ISCM World Music Days 2002 featuring Raymond Deane, Gerard Power and Donnacha Dennehy.

All of this activity highlights the growing appreciation of Irish contemporary music both at home and abroad and emphasizes the value and uniqueness of the CMC library and sound archive. New works are being submitted to CMC every week and there is no other comprehensive collection of Irish music anywhere in the world.

So if you haven't visited the Contemporary Music Centre for a while, maybe now is the time!