CMC announces 2022 Emerging Composers Aoife Kavanagh and Paul Scully
CMC is delighted to announce its two Emerging Composers for 2022: Aoife Kavanagh and Paul Scully
The CMC Emerging Composer scheme was established to provide supports and professional development opportunities to emerging composers, as a foundation programme for future Associate Representation. Throughout 2022, Aoife and Paul will receive mentoring and professional development opportunities in an individualised programme created by the Contemporary Music Centre.
Aoife Kavanagh
Photo: Christina Appleby
Aoife Kavanagh is an Irish emerging composer. She holds a BA in Music and German from Maynooth University (2018) and a Masters degree in Music Composition from Trinity College Dublin (2019). As a composer for dance, film, theatre and concert hall, collaborating with artists of other disciplines forms the backbone of Aoife’s practice.
Aoife has a particular interest in the interaction between music and dance, and has worked on a range of movement-based projects. Examples include This//Place//Meant, for the Dublin Youth Dance Company in Draíocht (2019), Post-Dance, a site specific piece in the Project Arts Centre (2019), See the Music, Hear the Dance, a screendance selected for screening at the Wicklow Screendance Festival (2019, 2021), and Man Down, a contemporary dance film with Roisin Whelan Dance (2021). Aoife was awarded an individual artist’s grant from Carlow County Council in 2021 to research and develop new music for dance, and she is working with aerial dance company Infinite Pants on their upcoming show in 2022.
Aoife has also composed for film and theatre. She was the sound designer on the Abbey Theatre production of The Long Christmas Dinner (2021), and her previous film credits include the Canadian short Hoodie (2020), and the animation The Corona (2021), the latter of which was commissioned by CYPSC and premiered at VISUAL Carlow, She has previously been selected for participation in composition workshops as part of Project Prelude (2020), and Finding a Voice Composition Competition (2021).
Paul Scully
Image: Paul Scully
Paul Scully is a composer and event manager based in Dublin. He studied composition at Trinity College Dublin with Evangelia Rigaki, graduating in 2016 with a BA (Hons.) in Music. In 2021 he graduated from IADT with a PGDip in Cultural Event Management (with distinction). From 2017–2020, he ran the Irish Composers’ Collective as an active exponent of new music and an advocate for young/emerging composers. He is the general manager of the experimental music ensemble Kirkos and runs their venue and artist space, Unit 44, in Stoneybatter.
Recent work Will we Give it a Bash? (2021), Line of Sight (2020), and Virtual Reality Therapy (2020) are concerned with the postdigital, examining the interplay between the digital and physical worlds. In these pieces, performers are asked to explore, adapt and juggle with demanding physical and digital spaces that are created for the piece. Scully uses speech and language in his music, microtonality, AI, Virtual & Augmented Reality, and explores the ideas of the uncanny valley and of soundscape ecology.
In 2021 he received the Arts Council’s Agility Award to develop a live version of his piece Virtual Reality Therapy which involves the tuning and repairing of an upright piano to create a hybrid electroacoustic microtonal instrument.