The Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland and Chamber Choir Ireland are delighted to announce that composers Bianca Gannon, Laura Heneghan, and Caterina Schembri have been selected to participate in the 2024 Choral Sketches programme.
Choral Sketches is a unique professional development opportunity for composers who wish to develop their skills in writing choral music with mentoring from renowned Irish composer, Rhona Clarke. The purpose of the programme is to provide a creative and open environment for composers to deepen their experience in writing for voices in a choral context.
The Choral Sketches composers meet this month for one-to-one mentoring ahead of submitting their sketches later this year. These sketches will be the focus of a public workshop led by conductor and Artistic Director Paul Hillier with Chamber Choir Ireland on 26 September 2024.
Following this workshop there will be a further mentoring session before the composers submit their finished sketches. The sketches will have a performance reading by Chamber Choir Ireland in early 2025, marking the culmination of the programme.
Bianca Gannon is an Irish interdisciplinary art music composer and improviser. Weaving together her extensive training in composition, improvised music, piano and Indonesian percussion, her works are often immersive, multi-sensory, investigative with social commentary, and deeply symbolic.
Laura Heneghan is a Mayo-born composer and pianist who predominantly composes chamber and vocal works. With music described as “memorable and strongly conceived” (The Scotsman), her work frequently makes “vivid use of the [ensemble]’s sonic potential in a compelling and convincing musical argument”.
Caterina Schembri is an Italian-Colombian composer and producer based in Dublin. Through her work, she likes to traverse harmonic explorations, literary motifs, multidisciplinary intersections, symbolic meaning, and different orchestration possibilities within acoustic and hybrid ensembles.
Read more about the composers selected for Choral Sketches 2024