Éna Brennan and Francis Heery awarded composer residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris
The Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (CCI) and the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland are delighted to award month-long artist residencies to CMC Composers Éna Brennan and Francis Heery, as part of the CCI's residency programme for 2025-26.
The CMC Composer residencies are co-funded by CMC Ireland and the CCI. This opportunity is offered via open call to CMC-represented artists with two residencies awarded annually.
Éna Brennan
Éna Brennan is a Dublin-based composer, arranger, violinist and graphic designer, originally from Brussels. Since moving to Dublin she has obtained a B.A. in Music and Drama and an MPhil in Composition from Trinity College Dublin, and collaborated with a vast array of artists, weaving in between many of the layers of the Irish music scene. Over the years she has had her work performed by Crash Ensemble, Kirkos Ensemble, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Dulciana Vocal Ensemble, Tonnta Vocal Ensemble, New Dublin Voices and Mornington Singers.
In recent years she has become involved in the world of opera, writing a micro-opera for the Irish National Opera project 20 Shots of Opera as well as a short immersive piece as part of her participation in INO’s artistic development programme, The ABL Aviation Opera Studio. She was also commissioned to write a larger work in collaboration with Sir David Pountney and visual artist Hugo Canoilas, which premiered in August 2024 in partnership with Bregenz Festival and Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria.
View her work and find out more at www.enabrennan.com
Francis Heery
Francis Heery (M.Phil, PhD) is a composer, performer and curator. His music is inspired by science-fiction, post-humanism and psycho-geography. His more recent compositions integrate improvisational strategies with mixed media scores, and make extensive use of live electronics. At the moment the question guiding his work is: To what extent is the idea of music as a living phenomenon merely a metaphor?
His music has been performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Quiet Music Ensemble, James Aylward, Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson, Izumi Kimura, Shane Latimer, Carin Levine, Talujon Percussion Quartet, Pascal Galois and the JACK quartet.
Performing with modular synthesiser, he plays regularly on the Berlin improvised music scene and is co-founder of untergrün and Nexus, two monthly concert series dedicated to improvised and experimental music.
This year sees the Centre Culturel Irlandais partnering with some 24 organisations for its artist residency programme, with 49 artists across the spectrum of artistic backgrounds to spend at least one month in Paris to develop their proposed projects, with a wide and exciting variety of outputs to be realised.The CCI residency programmme is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Visit centreculturelirlandais.com