Eoghan Desmond wins 2015 Jerome Hunes Composers' Competition

Eoghan Desmond has been announced as the winner of the 2015 Jerome Hynes Composition Competition. The Competition is run annually by the National Concert Hall, with past winners including Amanda Feery and Alex Dowling. The prize is in the form of a commission for mezzo-soprano and voice, working with the winner of the Bernadette Greevy Bursary winer.

"I was delighted to be informed that I had won this year's Jerome Hynes award, right on the tail of my Ó Riada win earlier this year. As a singer myself I was particularly excited by the prospect of writing for voice and piano and working with this year's Bernadette Greevy winner, Gemma Ní Bhriain. 

For the competition, I chose to submit my 'Meditations on Ave Maris Stella' for piano trio, first performed in 2012 by ensemble Avalon, and also a piece written specifically for the application – a setting of the final section of Rimbaud's Phrases for Mezzo-Soprano and piano. I chose these because they embody the more mystical, romantic side of my compositional mindset, which is the style in which I will be composing for Gemma, as opposed to the more snide, cycnical, neo-classical style that my O Riada winning piece represents."

Eoghan Desmond is a Dublin-based composer, conductor and bass-baritone. He holds a BA in music and an MPhil in composition, both from TCD, where he studied under Evangelia Rigaki, Matthew Barnson and Donnacha Dennehy. A choral musician since the age of 9, he composed his first mass at the age of 12, and has since had his choral music performed by leading Irish ensembles.