Peter Rosser receives major award from Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has awarded grants of £15,000 to four of Northern Ireland’s most promising artists. The Major Awards, presented to composer Peter Rosser, writer Ian Sansom, playwright Dave Duggan and visual artist Allan Hughes, acknowledge the valuable contribution each have made to the arts in Northern Ireland.

Represented by the CMC, Peter Rosser is a Belfast based composer. His music has been performed at events including Spitalfields Festival in London, the Belfast Festival at Queen’s and Crash Festival in London. On receiving the award he said:

“I’m honoured and delighted to be a recipient in 2011 of the Arts Council’s Major Individual Artist award. The opportunity to spend a year concentrating on composition will mean I can reactivate a couple of long-standing ambitions. The first is to work with the dynamic young vocal ensemble EXAUDI, for whom I’ll be writing a substantial work based on memory and forgetting. The second is to delve into some serious string quartet writing with the brilliant Jack Quartet from New York. The results of both will be seen and heard in Belfast in the next couple of years.

These annual awards are the largest grants presented to artists by the Arts Council each year. The financial support provided makes it possible for artists to take time out to dedicate to their creative work and to produce a substantial and ambitious project that will make a significant contribution to the development of their careers.

Congratulating this year’s recipients, Rosemary Kelly OBE., Arts Council of Northern Ireland Chairman said:

“All four of these artists have already made a notable contribution to the arts in Northern Ireland. This award of public funding will now help them, at the mid-point of their professional careers, to cement their national and international reputations, and to strengthen the positive cultural profile of Northern Ireland abroad.”