Focus

'Our challenge is to reclaim intimacy.' Bill Whelan The composer Bill Whelan spoke of the challenges facing composers at the launch of the Music Composition Centre at Trinity College, Dublin. Here, we reprint his speech in full.
No Anxiety Stephen Graham Stephen Graham talks to Irish composer Seán Clancy ahead of the premiere of the latter's Findetotenlieder by BCMG and Susan Narucki.
Another Hildegard Peter Rosser The twelfth century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen is celebrated as a visionary composer and writer, inspired directly by God, but there's an alternative history that paints her as an egotistical megalomaniac, for whom music was a means of repression.
Welcome Here Kind Stranger Adam Roberts Adam Roberts experienced his first traditional Irish music session during a trip to Ireland at the age of fifteen. Ever since he's been contemplating the links to his native bluegrass, and finding sanctuary in both traditions.
Before the Voice Anna Murray The Dublin band 3epkano are best known for playing live music to early silent films. The impulse, explains the group's founder, is to connect a contemporary musicial aesthetic to a bygone era in filmmaking, when a spirit of experimentation ran through the artform.
Repeat with Caution John McLachlan After the rejection of repetition by many modernist composers in the mid twentieth century, the extreme repetition of minimalism seemed inevitable. But, writes John McLachlan, composers don't always know when to stop.
Why Beyoncé Matters Stephen Graham One moment — BBC presenter Zane Lowe's on-air dismissal of Beyoncé's Glastonbury performance — has haunted Stephen Graham for months. To him it shows up layers of predjudices about music still rife in our society.
A Year of Pilgrimage James Holden To celebrate the bicentenary of Franz Liszt's birth, amateur pianist James Holden sets himself a new challenge.
Free of Baggage George Rafael Who is Kevin Volans? George Rafael goes looking for an answer after hearing the composer's latest piano concerto at the BBC Proms.
A Step Between Worlds Paul O'Connor Was the Gloaming — the new venture of Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Iarla Ó Lionáird and Thomas Bartlett — to be a well-intentioned experiment, or did it amount to something more promising?

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