The results of this year’s Arts Council Music Recording Scheme, managed by Music Network, have been announced, with a total of €71,500 allocated to nine different projects. Sixty-six applications were received, with most of the applications coming from genres ‘broadly definable’ as classical/contemporary and jazz.

‘The aim of this scheme is to ensure that the work of Irish composers and performers is available other than in live performance, and to ensure that important or neglected materials of Irish music are preserved and disseminated to the highest professional standard,’ said the organisers of the award.

Recipients of this year’s scheme are as follows:

• Kevin Brady (€10,000), to record a new album with the Kevin Brady Trio and Norma Winstone featuring new arrangements of rarely performed Jazz standards, folk tunes, and free improvisation.

• Flute player William Dowdall (€8,300), to record an album of music from the early 1740s that would have been performed in Dublin Castle and its environs.
• Mary Dullea (€9,766), to record works for solo piano by seven Irish composers, including David Fennessy, Ed Bennett, Grainne Mulvey, Benjamin Dwyer, Jonathan Nangle, John McLachlan and Frank Lyons.
• Crash Ensemble (€10,000), to record new works written for the ensemble by composers Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly, to be released on the Bedroom Community record label.

• Yurodny Ensemble (€7,495), to record a new album titled Haivka to be released on the Diatribe label. The album will feature Alla Zagaykevych’s new commission Sounds of Signs alongside new works commissioned for the Yurodni SciLens project in 2012.

• Ronan Guilfoyle (€3,000), to record a series of his new compositions, exploring the interstices between composition and improvisation.
• Laura Hyland (€6,730), to record a new album of seven original songs, together with her group Clang Sayne.

• Judith Ring (€9,322), to record an album of her compositions of the last fifteen years. The album will feature musicians for whom the compositions were originally conceptualised.
• Jürgen Simpson (€6,887), towards recording a feature length film score for the film Maya by director Mary Wycherley. Maya is the culmination of a fifteen year live-performance dance project developed by choreographer Joan Davis.

Seventy-six recordings have now been funded by the award to date, with a total of €572,000 spent on recording projects over a period of eight years.