The National Concert Hall has announced Christopher Moriarty from County Kildare and Sinéad O’Kelly from County Down as the winners of the 2018 Jerome Hynes Young Composers’ Competition and Bernadette Greevy Bursary respectively.

Moriarty, who receives a cash prize of €2,500 as winner of the Hynes Competition, will be offered the opportunity to work with the NCH to have his work performed in 2019. As winner of the Greevy Bursary, Sinéad O’Kelly will receive a bursary of €5,000 towards tuition and furthering her professional singing career, along with a recital in Autumn 2019.

Simon Taylor, Chief Executive of the National Concert Hall, commented:

Awards such as these help provide a platform and opportunity for compositional creativity and indeed performance. We look forward to working with both young musicians in their efforts to progress their career in music performance and composition.

Awards
Mezzo-soprano Sinéad O’Kelly is a recent graduate of the National Opera Studio in London. She won the Dramatic Cup and the Gervase Elwes prize at the 2018 Feis Ceoil and was named Young Opera Voice at the 2018 Navan Choral Festival. She was also NI Opera Voice of 2013 at the Glenarm Festival and a winner of Northern Ireland Young Musicians’ Platform Awards in 2014. O’Kelly made her professional debut singing in Northern Ireland’s Opera’s 2014 tour of The Magic Flute. For 2018/19 she will be a member of the International Opera Studio at Opernhaus Zurich.

Clarinettist and composer Christopher Moriarty has had his music performed nationally and internationally. His work Iridescence for 21 solo strings was premiered as part of a nationwide tour by the Esker Festival Orchestra in 2017. His Opaque Rhapsody was featured on an album by John Finucane released earlier this year. Moriarty is also a former winner of the Irish Freemasons Young Musicians of the Year and made his international debut as soloist in Weber’s Concertino for clarinet and orchestra with the New York Sinfonietta in Carnegie Hall in 2015.

Previous winners
Previous winners of the Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award include Sarah Brady soprano (2017), bass-baritone Padraic Rowan (2016), soprano Roisin Walsh (2015), soprano Jennifer Davis (2013), mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly (2012), Aoife Miskelly (2011) and baritone Gavan Ring (2010). Previous winners of the Jerome Hynes Composers’ Competition include Robert Coleman (2017), David Coonan (2016) Eoghan Desmond (2015) and Alex Dowling and Amanda Ferry as joint winners (2013).

The judges for the Hynes Composers’ Competition were New Music Dublin Festival Director John Harris and composer Rhona Clarke who is also an Associate Professor at Dublin City University. The Greevy Bursary judges were Diego Fasciati, Executive Director of Irish National Opera, and soprano Mairéad Buicke, currently Company Principal with the English National Opera. Sinéad O’Kelly performed ‘Dopo Notte’ from Ariodanteby Händel and ‘Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen’ by Mahler. Christopher Moriarty’s application included his scores of Iridescence and Opaque Rhapsody.

For more, visit www.nch.ie.