Peter Moran recounts how composing music with school children builds their confidence, self-awareness and ability to express themselves. Recent projects in schools have shown him we need to be more ambitious about what children can achieve.

Ahead of the premiere of a new work for singer Eimear Quinn, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the Dublin Laptop Orchestra, composer Emma O'Halloran talks about the holy grail of composing, city life and where to begin when writi

The composer David Lang talks about how writing by hand changed his music.

Composition-driven jazz group Rhombus will play a selection of original music that explores the connections between jazz and contemporary classical music at the National Concert Hall.

At the 1948 London Olympic Games, when the competition still awarded medals for music and other arts, 'gentle Miss Ina Boyle' narrowly missed out on a bronze medal.

Are animal sounds music? Emily Doolittle explores the connections between our own songs and those of animals and birds.

The innovative Seattle-based string quartet announce details of their programme to commission work from young composers.

The Derry-based art centre have issued a call for original music for two Theatre of Witness plays in 2012 and 2013.

The Irish Music Rights Organisation host their first networking event since running the very first course in music composition for video games, with the second course taking place in June.

Recordings of recent work by Irish composer Enda Bates are being released during a CMC Salon event at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Wednesday, 25 April.

Listeners may be finding more and more signs of a renaissance in innovation in Irish traditional music these days, writes Jack Talty.

A performance of John Cage's Musicircus in London delights Liam Cagney, but he is less convinced by the deification of the composer.

Taking Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ chorale prelude, ‘Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ’ as its starting point, 'I Call to You' features new arrangements of the prelude by Jonathan Nangle, Simon O’Connor and Garrett Sholdice, an

A dislike of modern music is understandable, says Bob Gilmore, but for him it is the challenge of the music he loves that makes it so special.

The maximum amount for the Arts Council's music commissions award is €10,000. Submissions should be made by Thursday, 15 March 2012.

The contemporary music ensemble Concorde is celebrating its thirty-fifth year in existence.

A young Irish composer, Sebastian Adams, is through to the final of the Sorodha International Composition Competition. The prize is awarded for a composition written for solo violin.

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.

This tour will feature the playing and compositions of Máirtín O'Connor, Liz Carroll and Dave Flynn, as well showcasing the work of other traditional music composers living and dead.

Stephen Graham talks to Irish composer Seán Clancy ahead of the premiere of the latter's Findetotenlieder by BCMG and Susan Narucki.

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.

Who is Kevin Volans? George Rafael goes looking for an answer after hearing the composer's latest piano concerto at the BBC Proms.

Musicians need to think carefully about the impact of technology on their music, writes Peter Rosser: they must resist when technology threatens to dehumanise music, to deprive it of its most essential features.

The idea of a common language in composition is a thing of the past: the world of contemporary music is now entirely chaotic, the result of individualism, tradition and cosmopolitanism pulling, irreconcilably, against each other.

An unlikely combination of sound-detritus and the craft of composition, the music of Ed Bennett makes strong statements about taking on, and overcoming, our contemporary challenges.

A concert in Donegal found unity in the vitality of contemporary Irish composition's diverse strands.

Recent concert and competition jury experiences suggest to John McLachlan that only the best music sparks disagreement, and that mediocre work enjoys consensus.

In bringing together the sean-nós singing tradition, the poetry of W.B.

Enda Bates' music for hexaphonic guitar brings together his formal training and rock influences.

We visit the composer Linda Buckley at her Dublin home before the premiere her new work with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

Counterpoint in music – as much a concept as a technique – has been with us for centuries, from the twelfth-century vocal music of Léonin to the playlists on our iPods. But what is really at the heart of the idea?

Seventy years after the release of Citizen Kane, George Rafael looks at the close, if often tempestous, relationship between the film's director, Orson Welles, and its composer, Bernard Herrmann – and how they changed the way filmmaker

Composers are afraid of using the basic building blocks of their trade.

The author of A Clockwork Orange may have been better known as a novelist, but Anthony Burgess was also a prolific composer whose music is only now being explored.

"If you don’t have a friend who is an artist, you’re wasting your time." – Morton Feldman was closely associated with a number of visual artists, particularly those of the New York School.

Garrett Sholdice discovers an opera that finally feels like the best cinema.

If we want new opera to relate to our twenty-first century experience, we must return to first principles, says Christopher Fox

Promoters of art mislead audiences by suggesting that there is meaning where there is none. Sometimes you just have to trust the artist, writes John McLachlan

Composer competitions are a twisted game.

Bob Gilmore interviews leading young composer Linda Buckley who divides her time between Berlin and Dublin.

Fidelio Trio: Darragh Morgan (violin), Robin Michael (cello) & Mary Dullea (piano); Natasha Lohan (voice)John Field Room, NCH25 March 2008Although the works curated by Linda Buckley had unique voices, they were united by a sense of perp

Elastic Harmonic NMC D133 Joanna MacGregor, Tatiana Koleva, Crash Ensemble, ensemble Intégrales, Darragh Morgan, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra/Gavin Maloney The direction at the beginning of the score for Glamour Sleeper, the track that

Horizons: Featured composer – Donnacha DennehyRTÉ NSO, Darragh Morgan (violin), National Chamber Choir (David Darcy, chorus master), Gavin Maloney (cond.)NCH, Dublin, 30 January 2007Strange Folk!: Crash Ensemble & Iarla Ó LionáirdSamuel

In February 2006, Steve Reich came to Ireland for the fourth RTÉ Living Music Festival of which he was the featured composer. In this article, published at the time, Bob Gilmore discusses Reich's work and the ideas around it.

The music of Donnacha Dennehy.

On the imperialist attitude taken by many classical musicians to music that is not notated.