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For Immediate Release

Irish Composer Brian Boydell and The White Stag Group

27 June 2005

The Contemporary Music Centre (CMC) in conjunction with the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) is producing a CD recording and concert of music by Irish composer Brian Boydell as part of the White Stag exhibition.

A major exhibition of works by The White Stag group, containing two of Boydell's paintings, opens at IMMA on 5 July 2005 and runs across the summer.

Boydell, one of the most important composers of the twentieth century with a significant output in most genres, was a member of the so-called White Stag group of British artists who based themselves in Ireland in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Boydell subsequently chose to pursue music rather than art.

In a joint project by IMMA and CMC, a CD recording of compositions from this period in Boydell's life will form part of the exhibition catalogue. The works will also be performed live in a concert at the Baroque Chapel in IMMA on 17 July 2005. To reserve tickets for the concert please contact IMMA on 01 - 612 9900. The exhibition catalogue with CD will be available for purchase in the shop at IMMA, Royal Hospital, Military Road, Kilmainham. The catalogue is produced in association with Mason Hayes and Curran Solicitors.

The pieces are the Oboe Quintet (1940), The Feather of Death (1943), String Quartet No. 1 (1947) and are performed by the leading international ConTempo string quartet (currently Galway's Quartet in Residence) with Síle Daly (oboe), Roland Davitt (baritone) and Ríona Ó Duinnín (flute).

This project is made possible through the generous support of Trinity College Dublin, Varming Mulcahy Reilly Consulting Engineers and Mr Aleck Crichton.

For further information on Brian Boydell please contact the Contemporary Music Centre, 19 Fishamble Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 1. Tel: 01 673 1922 or email: info@cmc.ie

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Notes for Editors

Brian Boydell (1917-2000)
Brian Boydell was born in Dublin and educated at Cambridge University, the University of Heidelberg, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. In 1959 he was awarded the MusD degree of Dublin University. He was Professor of Music at Trinity College from 1962 to 1982 and was latter a Fellow Emeritus of the college.

Brian Boydell was a founder member of the Music Association of Ireland and founder and director of the Dowland Consort. For more than twenty years he was conductor of the Dublin Orchestral Players and was frequently guest conductor with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. For some years he was a member of the Arts Council. The many honours he has received include an Hon. DMus from the National University of Ireland, Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana, and Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He was also a member of Aosdána, Ireland's state-sponsored academy of creative artists. His compositions, written for a wide variety of media, include four string quartets, a violin concerto, orchestral, chamber and choral works.
(biography © Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland)
www.cmc.ie

The White Stag Group
The White Stag Group centred around a number of British artists who based themselves in Ireland in the late 1930s and early '40s. The arrival of Basil Rakoczi and Kenneth Hall in Ireland at this time, created a new, youthful and dynamic focus of energy that had a profound effect on the debates and practices of art in Ireland. They brought with them the vitality of the Bloomsbury set, of which they were a part in the years preceding the War. They represented, and encouraged, a move from Academicism to Modernism, and their "Subjective Art" strongly influenced the work being made at the time by Irish artists such as Louis le Brocquy, May Guinness and Patrick Scott. The White Stag Group was not held together by an over-arching stylistic or formal basis, it was a social, geographic and intellectual collective. It embraced many disciplines which will be explored in the exhibition with a section on the Society for Creative Psychology, which was led by Basil Rakoczi, and a CD insert on the work of the composer Brian Boydell who exhibited paintings with the group and also collaborated musically with some of its members.

The exhibition will consist of approximately 65 paintings and drawings, from international museums and private collections. Artists represented include Thurloe Conolly, Bobby Dawson, Paul Egestorff, Nick Nicholls, Patrick Scott and Doreen Vanston.
www.imma.ie