Dylan Murphy announced as winner of West Wicklow Festival and CMC Ireland 2025 Emerging Composition Competition (Solo Viola Award)
The emerging composer composition competition is an ongoing partnership presented by the West Wicklow Festival and the Contemporary Music Centre to provide opportunities for emerging composers in Ireland. In 2025 two separate awards were established with entrants invited to submit a piece for solo soprano saxophone and solo viola for the May and November editions of the festival respectively.
We are delighted that the emerging composer composition competition continues to go from strength to strength! We are grateful for the ongoing collaboration with CMC Ireland and the festival team are very much looking forward to hearing Dylan Murphy’s work premiered at the Winter Festival’s Rising Stars concert by violist Fiachra de hOra.
- Tara Viscardi, WWF Festival Manager (Education and Communication).
It was wonderful to see such a large number of applications for the competition, and the overall quality was extremely high. It made the panel's job very difficult! 'Where Now? Who Now? When Now?' stood out due to its excellent execution of an imaginative concept and its rich timbral palette.
- Finola Merivale, Composer and member of the independent adjudication panel for the competition.
About the winning work
'Where Now? Who Now? When Now?' explores the aesthetics of Beckett’s 'The Unnamable', whilst also trying to distil the techniques I have used within 'the silence, the end, the beginning' – for solo cello into a more condensed form. Reversibility is key to this, which can be heard within; but I found engaging with this aspect in a more free way to open my compositional style to more options.
- Dylan Murphy, composer.
Dylan Murphy is a contemporary classical composer and performer from Galway, Ireland, currently completing a PhD in composition at Maynooth University. His work merges contemporary classical and jazz traditions, creating rich, textural soundscapes influenced by Xenakis, Saariaho, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. His music has been performed by Xenia Pestova, Adrian Mantu and others. Recent works include Stone. Grass. Silence. (string quartet), Between Two Tones (magnetic resonator piano), and the silence, the end, the beginning (solo cello). Upcoming premieres include riverrun II (electric guitar, Sept 2025) and a new work for the Éire Guitar Duo (Jan 2026).
The piece will be premiered on 15th November by violist Fiachra de hOra as part of the West Wicklow Festival Rising Stars Concert at The Manor House, Tulfarris. Dylan will also be interviewed by CMC’s Garrett Sholdice during the concert, offering an insight into his composition practice and the development of the winning work. The Rising Stars Concert is performed by violist Fiachra de hOra and pianist Claudia Fernández Parrondo and includes music by composers Rhona Clarke, Garth Knox and Robert Schumann. To find out more and book tickets visit the West Wicklow Festival website here.
If you are interested in finding out about more opportunities for emerging and early-career artists, visit CMC’s Opportunities page which is regularly updated with partnership and external artist development opportunities, workshops, supports, awards and open calls. CMC also delivers two bespoke programmes for emerging artists working in New Music in Ireland, the CMC Brigid Scheme and the CMC Emerging Artist Scheme.