Bianca Gannon

(b. 1987)

 

Bianca Gannon is an Irish interdisciplinary art music composer and improviser. Weaving together her extensive training in composition, improvised music, piano and Indonesian percussion, her works are often immersive, multi-sensory, investigative with social commentary and deeply symbolic. Passionately exploring parallels between seemingly disparate concepts, Bianca is inspired by that which connects us.

King House Piano Commission Awardee, BAN BAM Awardee (Composition), Pythia Prize Winner (Composition), Improvised Music Company 30/30 Artist (one of Ireland's outstanding improvisers) and 2020 Artist in Residence with the City of Greater Dandenong, Bianca's work has been presented internationally by leading ensembles including loadbang, Ensemble Offspring, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Australian Art Orchestra. Bianca recently performed her Melbourne Symphony Orchestra commission ‘Utter Stutter Flutter’ for piano, orchestra, video, electronics and West Javanese angklung, at the Myer Music Bowl. With an audience of ten thousand, The Age described it as “soul-stirring” and the ABC as “extraordinary...a really special work”.

The premiere of her work 'Our House Is On Fire' by Rubiks Collective was awarded the 2021 Percy Grainger Award. ClassikON hailed it as “living up to the evenings luminary thread... A beautifully crafted and relevant work... its relevance possesses a need for dissemination into the canon." Bianca has lived in and studied music intensively across the Indonesian archipelago including as a recipient the Indonesian Arts and Culture Scholarship. This informs her work in surprising ways including collaborating with internationally acclaimed Indonesian artists and with custodians of endangered Indonesian food-centric instruments in ‘The Sound of Shadows’ series.