6 Works Nominated by the Irish Section for ISCM World New Music Days Festival in Romania 2026
Following an open call for works to represent the Irish Section at the 2026 ISCM World New Music Days Festival, the Contemporary Music Centre is delighted to announce the six works put forward to the ISCM International Jury.
The ISCM World New Music Days festival is an annual international showcase of new music representing contemporary work from across the globe. The 2026 edition, subtitled “Columna Infinita” after the sculpture by Constantin Brâncuși, will take place from 23 - 31 May in venues across Bucharest, Romania.
The following works were selected by an independent panel convened by CMC and included artists working in new music in Ireland. Of the six works put forward to the ISCM International Jury, at least one must be programmed for performance at the Festival.
David Fennessy - Rain I & II (for string orchestra), 2023-24.
(written for the premiere of RAIN II, six months after the premiere of RAIN I)
I was intrigued by the idea of composing a piece of music in two halves separated by an interval of six months. By my reckoning, we’re at least 186 million miles from where we were when RAIN I was first performed last winter, equidistant on the other side of the sun!
Where the musical material in RAIN I came from a line in Vivaldi’s Summer, the material for RAIN II comes from his Winter, both viewed at extreme distance, through a telescope, if you will.
Dylan Murphy - the silence, the end, the beginning (for solo cello), 2024.
'the silence, the end, the beginning' explores the world of Beckettian prose, particularly The Unnamable. My recent work, shaped by research at Maynooth University, often engages with the expansive literary influence of Joyce, Beckett’s pursuit of nothing—his lessnessness— demands a contrasting compositional approach. The idea of Beckettian Reversibility— forward motion held in stasis—inspired structural elements that may remain hidden to the listener but underpin the work’s aesthetic. This is particularly evident in a drone-like section, where harmonic material moves yet continually reverses upon itself, creating the illusion of progress while remaining suspended in a state of perpetual stasis.
Ailís Ní Ríain - Calling Mutely Through Lipless Mouth (symphony orchestra), 2023.
The work was written in response to my Mother’s death in 2022. Her last weeks were complicated and full of suffering - she had decided to leave this world. This piece is the only coherent response I have to what I witnessed over that painful period. The title is taken from The Glass Essay by Ann Carson - the Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson published “The Glass Essay”, which is a long poem, in her 1995 book Glass, Irony and God which I was re-reading during my Mother’s last weeks before her death in August 2022. I was particularly struck by the following passage which I read after my Mother’s life left her. It seemed to resonate with the strain and difficulty of those final weeks, her emaciation, her silence, her need to go, my need to let her go.
It is a hard wind slanting from the north.
Long flaps and shreds of flesh rip off the woman’s body and lift
and blow away on the wind, leaving
an exposed column of nerve and blood and muscle
calling mutely through lipless mouth.
It pains me to record this,
I am not a melodramatic person.
But soul is “hewn in a wild workshop”
as Charlotte Brontë says of Wuthering Heights.
Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay” from Glass, Irony, and God. Copyright © 1994 by Anne Carson. Source: Glass Irony and God (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1995).
Xenia Pestova Bennett - GLOW (audiovisual work), 2025.
Music, concept, field recordings and texts: Xenia Pestova Bennett. Video art: Steven Lee.
GLOW is about ghosts – a range of mysterious glowing phenomena that continue to enthral and terrify us. Three stories are told in three different languages: a strange electric light envelopes masts of a sailing ship; fairy flames beguile a traveller at night; a luminous presence enters a room. Live instruments weave through and colour the narratives. Each language acts as an instrument in its own right, explored for unique sonic qualities. Inspired by the diaries of Georg Wilhelm Steller, the writings of Nan Shepherd and the stories of Xenia's great-grandmother.
Caterina Schembri - Ode to Psyche (for SATB choir), 2024-25.
The piece uses excerpts from Ode to Psyche (1819) by John Keats as found in "JOHN KEATS AND PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: Essential Poems" edited by Duncan Wu (Keats-Shelley House Rome, 2016). The text is Keats’ personal adoration written for Psyche, the Greek Goddess of the soul. The scene is set while he walks through a forest and finds her statue: lost, hidden, decadent — he starts his adoration towards this forgotten figure with no shrine, promising that he will be her priest and will build her a temple in an “untrodden region” of his mind. I am mesmerised by the striking imagery of this poem and also by the duality presented in it— on one side there is the idea of the soul, the spiritual, and the infinite quality of the Goddess, and on the other there is the actual statue, marked by time, earthly and grounded. The poet tries desperately to bridge the gap between the two with his adoration. This piece is an exploration of that particular aspect of the poem. With gratitude to Rhona Clarke, the Contemporary Music Centre, and Chamber Choir Ireland.
Ian Wilson - Wild is the Wind (for solo bass clarinet), 2018.
'Wild is the Wind' (2018) came out of a series of conversations I had with bass clarinettist Gareth Davis about what kind of work he would most like me to write for him - we had been talking about collaborating on and off for some years. Gareth has been working with a number of composers over a number of years on a project called 'Standards', contemporary responses to classic jazz tunes. This project appealed to me greatly, jazz being a great love of mine, and so I asked my partner for titles of some of her favourite Nina Simone songs. Her suggestion of "Wild is the Wind" was a good one because I did not know that song and was able to respond to it quite objectively, deconstructing the melody and some of Nina's performative gestures and making a new construction based on those elements, while trying to retain something of the song's original character.
'Wild is the Wind' was written for Gareth Davis, who premiered it at the 2018 Gaudeamus Music Week in The Netherlands. The piece is dedicated to Dušica.