Dr. Kevin O' Connell, head of the composition department at the RIAM, will present a free talk on Igor Stravinsky in the Boydell Room (top floor) of House 5, Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday 24th October from 6–7pm.
As a composer himself, Kevin will be taking a personal appraoch to what Stravinky's music means to him. This will include asking some questions about it that he once did not. This talk is in conjunction with our concert In Dialogue w/Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet which will be performed by ConTempo String Quartet in January. Six new works by ICC composers will be written In DIalogue with Stravinsky's Three Pieces and performed alongside them.
Kevin O’Connell studied music at Trinity College Dublin and obtained his PhD in Composition from Dublin City University. He completed his first commission for BBC Radio 3, “Concertino for 12 players”, when he was 25. He has since completed commissions from many of the leading arts organisations for performers including the Ulster Orchestra, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Lotus Quartet of Stuttgart, the Hugo Wolf Quartet of Vienna, the Royal Irish Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Lontano Ensemble of London and Opera Theatre Company, for whom he has composed two operas. In 2005 he was Artistic Director of RTÉ’s Living Music Festival. For this event he put together a programme of mainly German music focused on Hans Werner Henze.
These will be the final talk of the In Dialogue series. In Dialogue is a unique series which takes place from July to January. 5 concerts with a central work from an established composer along with premieres of new works written in response. Corresponding talks and workshops explore the instrumentation of the central works and the composers behind them. These events serve to enhance the musical discourse between the composers of now and then. Grant aid from Arts Council and the Irish Music Rights Organisation.
