New Music Dublin Festival takes place from 6–9 March 2014

Donnacha Dennehy

New Music Dublin (NMD) is a partnership initiative of The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, The National Concert Hall, RTÉ Orchestras and the Contemporary Music Centre.

With significant funding from the Arts Council, the festival returns for the second year with a new Artistic Director, Irish composer and founder of Crash Ensemble, Donnacha Dennehy:

"I am very excited to be curating New Music Dublin 2014. I see it as an opportunity to introduce Irish audiences to some of the most thrilling and interesting new music composed in recent times. I am especially happy to be able to include works by composers not very often heard in Ireland, such as Georg Friedrich Haas, Hans Abrahamsen, Claude Vivier and Harrison Birtwistle. Haas and Abrahamsen are two of the most individual voices around, producing some of the standout pieces of the last decade. Two of these standout works – Abrahamsen’s hour-long Schnee (meaning Snow) and Haas’s 3rd string quartet, which is presented entirely in the dark – are cornerstones of this festival. The Canadian individualist Claude Vivier is represented by his haunting and beautiful Lonely Child, performed for the first time in Ireland, while the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra will give the Irish premiere of Birtwistle’s darkly energetic Earth Dances.

Other highlights include Icebreaker performing an evening set built around the music of Kraftwerk, an electro-acoustic performance of Stockhausen’s Oktophonie (with an 8-channel set-up), Gyorgy Ligeti’s masterly Chamber Concerto (in one of Crash Ensemble’s concerts), alongside music by Gerald Barry, Michael Gordon, Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov. Jenny Walshe will give one of her wonderful solo performances of her own work, and Therese Fahy will take us on a tour of new Irish music for the piano. I am delighted to be welcoming such dynamic performers as these and the Arditti Quartet, ConTempo, Crash Ensemble, Icebreaker, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and Andrew Zolinsky for the festival."

NMD takes place at the National Concert Hall and tickets for the events are available to book from the NCH’s web site.

Further information on the festival will be available from www.newmusicdublin.ie and through the festival’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

[vimeo 85455282 w=500 h=281] New Music Dublin Festival: Artistic Director Donnacha Dennehy introduces this year's programme from Contemporary Music Centre on Vimeo.