Composer Brian Irvine has recently been appointed as Associate Composer to the Ulster Orchestra.

The position is for three years and involves the composition of several major commissions as well as directing large-scale education/creation projects.

The Brian Irvine Ensemble (BIE) recently returned from a short tour of Russia with the British Council. While on tour, the ensemble also engaged in a number of performance/composition workshops in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. BIE also premiered new Irvine works at the recent BANG '06 festival in Bangor, County Down.

Brian Irvine recently composed and conducted the film scores for animation films Loocymoon and Horn OK Please as well as the short film The Linnet and a BBC documentary on the independent film mavericks, the Spence brothers.

This summer Irvine will be the music director for the Prince's Trust week-long Sound Live music residential course in Belfast and will be one of the tutors on the Sonic Arts Summer School at Queen’s University, Belfast.

The Brian Irvine Ensemble will be performing at the Belfast Festival at Queen's University later this year and the Smithsonian Festival in Washington USA next April. An extended orchestral version of A Marvellous Medicine will be performed next year by the Ulster Orchestra together with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra and two hundred young singers.

Upcoming commissions for Irvine include a 60-minute chorus opera for Welsh National Opera and a ten-minute opera lab piece for Ireland's Opera Theatre Company.

For further information on these performances, please visit our Calendar.

Posted: 11 June 2006