The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s (RTÉ NSO) series of new music concerts begins in January.

The featured composers for the 2007 Horizons concerts are Ed Bennett (finalist in the 2005 British Composer Awards), Gráinne Mulvey (RTÉ Musician of the Future Competition winner 1994), Donnacha Dennehy (artistic director and founder of the acclaimed Crash Ensemble) and John Kinsella (member of Aosdána and former Head of Music in RTÉ).

Music by the featured composers will include Bennett’s Ausland (awarded first prize at the Tactus Composers Forum in Brussels in December), Mulvey’s Scorched Earth (commissioned by RTÉ and premiered by the RTÉ NSO and Petri Sakari in October 2004), Dennehy’s Elastic Harmonic (first performed by the RTÉ NSO on RTÉ TV’s The Symphony Sessions), and Kinsella’s Montage 2. The programmes will also include Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Grind to a Halt by Bang on a Can founder David Lang.

For this year’s series, the RTÉ NSO will be joined by jazz saxophonist Paul Dunmall, contemporary violinist Darragh Morgan, and the National Chamber Choir. The concerts will be conducted by Colman Pearce, Robert Houlihan, and Gavin Maloney.

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's Horizons concerts take place in the National Concert Hall each Tuesday from 16 January to 6 February 2007. See Calendar for details.

Posted: 5 January 2007