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

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.

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.

Since its invention in the eighteenth century, the string quartet has proved one of the most resilient forms, continuously reinvented and repurposed for changing times.

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

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

Stephen Graham rounds up classical news, including Resurgam celebrating Gabrieli, an exciting line-up for MaerzMusik 2012 in Berlin, Cara O'Sullivan in Sligo, the first EPTA Piano Festival and Concorde at the Contemporary Music Centre.

A new piece for electric guitar and orchestra by the Irish composer Ronan Guilfoyle will be performed for the first time in full on Friday, 20 January, at the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

The 2011 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival included extreme durations, music with found objects, non-orchestral music for orchestra as well as on-stage boxing and wrestling.

The Dublin band 3epkano are best known for playing live music to early silent films.

Musica Nova is a semesterly contemporary music series of the Department of Music and Creative Media at the Dundalk Institute of Technology. Crash Ensemble cellist and Kaleidoscope curator Kate Ellis appears on 1 December.

King’s Place in London have announced the schedule for the first three months of 2012 for their weekly night of new music and experimental performance, Out Hear, and it features such performers as Phil Minton and Exaudi.

Kaleidoscope, a monthly night of classical and new music curated by violinist Cliodhna Ryan and cellist Kate Ellis, will celebrate its second birthday at the Button Factory in Dublin on 11 December, with music by David Fennessy and others.

The Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin will host a range of new music concerts and workshops as part of their New Music Days event, which runs across 23—25 November.

Composer Roger Doyle and Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu will bring their four-concert series at the Mermaid Arts Centre in County Wicklow to a close on 26 November.

Crash Ensemble will premiere a new work by Nico Muhly on 25 November in Dublin's Liberty Hall. The concert will also feature music by four of Muhly's American contemporaries.

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

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.

Performances at the 2011 Sligo New Music Festival were about total immersion and intense focus, hinging on the listeners' willingness to share in a slow, smouldering process.

The music of Martin Creed communicates on the simplest, most obvious terms – just like his visual art, but wilder.

Born in Dublin in 1976, Judith Ring is a composer for whom the physical experience of a sound will shape everything.

What makes music ecstatic? A New York festival suggests that it can all hang on a single moment.

Funding for the arts is essential, but without the right approach it can blunt artists’ entrepreneurial skills, writes Toner Quinn

Student dancers at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, May 2008: photograph from a current exhibition at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, by Maurice Gunning, photographer-in-residence at the Academy

In an age when music is available anywhere, anytime, where do you find the underground, and what defines it?

Commissioned to compose a work in response to 9/11, John Adams confronted the question: can modern classical music still be the transcendental force we need it to be? by Barra Ó Séaghdha

Being cut off is a state of mind, writes composer John McLachlan

The digital medium will set radio free, but will it change the essence of radio, asks Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

There is a long line of theories claiming that we have reached the end of art, but they are forgetting something, writes Joanna Demers

The direct impact the new digital culture is having on music, in terms of access, dissemination and copyright, is well documented, but the indirect impact less so.

"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.

"The golden age of music magazine publishing and the dominance of the critic in the middle of the twentieth century has recognisably passed". Is the era of the critic coming to an end?

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

The rise and fall of the Irish new music scene.

Entrepreneur: Origin early 19th cent.

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

The Jerome Hynes Commission Opportunity for Young Composers, IrelandDeadline: 31 December 2009Open to composers under the age of 30, who are resident or domiciled in Ireland.

LISTINGS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY MUSIC CENTREContinued from October–November 2009 Works Received, August – September 2009Buckley, John, Lullaby for Deirdre [n.d.], gui.de Bromhead, Jerome, Guitar Sonata No.

Evenset, Diatribe (DIACD008)

Can you hear the difference between a pause and silence? Composer Tom Johnson explores recent trends in European minimalism and silent music.

Born in 1969 in Sydney to a Sephardic Jewish family originally from Iraq, guitarist Oren Ambarchi’s music is underpinned by his desire to tell stories.

Classical/Early   CD Review Andrew McGregor Sat, 9:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cdreview/Classical Collection Sarah Walker Mon–Fri, 10:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classicalcollection Composer of the Week Donal...

As I Now Have Memoyre, Linda Hirst, Natasha Lohan, Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Riverside Studios, London, 13 August 2009

Maria de Alvear (voice), Songs of an Old Female Hippopotamus, Zwielicht, A trans Pavilion, Berlin, 25 July 2009

Fairy-tale Sounds International Composition Competition, ItalyDeadline: 15 October 2009Open to all composers. Works for (A) chamber music with children’s choir, dur. max. 10 mins, or (B) mime scene, suitable for 11–13 years olds, dur. max.

Classical/Early   CD Review Andrew McGregor Sat, 9:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cdreview/Classical Collection Sarah Walker Mon–Fri, 10:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classicalcollection Composer of the Week Donal...

Continuum, London & New York

The Celtic Viol, Alia Vox (AVSA 9865)

The Jonah, Camera Obscura (CAM084CD)

Mark O’Leary, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 27 August 2009

Nico Muhly (piano), Nadia Sirota (viola), Helgi Jonsson (trombone, voice), Absolut Fringe Festival, Spiegeltent, Dublin, 6 September 2009

The inanity of commissioned music today is shocking, writes Peter Rosser, and for the radical, questioning artist, freedom means being cut adrift from employment. How did we arrive at this point, and what can be done about it?

Mike Hanrahan, Cork, writes:While I welcome Bill Whelan’s commentary on the digital rights debacle (Aug-Sept), and indeed his call to arms to all concerned authors and composers, a part of me cannot but feel it’s all a little too late.

This is really out there

This is really happening

Origin early 19th cent. (denoting the director of a musical institution): from French, entreprendre, ‘undertake’

Stravinsky, emigré A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler’s Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California (Yale University Press) by Dorothy Lamb Crawford examines the gathering of sixteen performers, fourteen composers (including Stravinsky...

How is music written? A short bit, then extended, and soon the whole piece is there? John McLachlan discusses the subtle paths from conception to finished work.

Hauschka (a.k.a. Volker Bertelmann) is a German pianist and composer living in Dusseldorf. He writes extensively for pianos prepared with felt, rubber, aluminium, cork, tape, film and other materials.

Andrew’s Lane Theatre, Dublin6 May 2009The latest incarnation of Somadrone is as a duo comprising its architect Neil O’Connor with Glenn Keating, both playing synthesisers.

Harry Beckett (trumpet), Ian Smith (flugelhorn) Robert Jarvis, Alan Tomlinson (trombones), Andrew Robinson (recorders), Neil Metcalfe (flute), Terry Day (reed pipes & recorder), Lol Coxhill, Adrian Northover, Evan Parker (soprano saxes)

London Symphony Orchestra, Lang Lang (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Tan Dun (conductor), Wu Man (pipa), Kronos Quartet, Mamer, Hanggai, FM3, Xiao He, Yan Jun, Wu Na, WhiteBarbican, LSO St Luke’s and Union Chapel; London21 March – 16 May 2

The Theory of Impossible MelodyNew World Records (80684-2)A scholar in medieval literature was talking to me recently about the Anglo-Saxon word for poet: scop (pronounced ‘shop’). It’s derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb scieppan – ‘to...

Double TrioDiatribe Recordings DIACD006Double Trio is the product of Ian Wilson’s year-long residency in the Glencullen electoral area south of Dublin.

VariousHiccupRTÉ lyric fm CD123Hiccup makes a timely appearance as newspaper headlines sound alarm bells about the financial difficulties facing RTÉ.

Monoliths and DimensionsSouthern Lord RecordsThe beautiful ambient/minimalist electronica of Australian anti-guitarist Oren Ambarchi has been one of the discoveries of the last five years for me.

Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques, Soloists of Ensemble Intercontemporain, Le Concert Français, Pierre Hantaï, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Susanna Mälkki Cité de la Musique, Paris 9–11 May 2009 The analogy between Jean-Philippe...

The future of the orchestra is in composers’ hands

What role does metaphor play in music?

Twelve Études for GuitarGamelan Media (GAM0004)Reviewing a live performance by Benjamin Dwyer of his Twelve Études for Guitar in the The Journal of Music last year, Rob Casey applauded the diverse technical challenges and genre-spanning rea

Tesla/ LISTEN hEAR Farpoint RecordingsThe brilliance of the Quiet Club, the Cork-based ‘entity’ of Danny McCarthy and Mick O’Shea, is best apprehended live.

Batu. Barcode III.

Gamelan Sekar Petak, Neil Sorrell (director); The Gong Agenda; Michelle O’Rourke (soprano); Salil Sachdev (metal bowl, djembe, hang); Joe Browning (shakuhachi), Jonathan Sage (clarinet); Linda Buckley (voice)National Concert Hall, Dublin, 1

Café Oto, London9–11 March 2009Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M’s three-day residency at Café Oto featured them in solo and duo performances, in addition to group improvisations alongside musicians such as Eddie Prévost, Christian...

Kevin Volans (piano); Jennifer Walshe (vocals); Crash Ensemble: Emily Thyne (violin), Lisa Grosman (viola), Kate Ellis (cello), Malachy Robinson (double bass), John Godfrey (piano), Deirdre O’Leary (clarinet), Andrew Crowley (trumpet), Owen

RTÉ Vanbrugh QuartetIrish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin3 April 2009In Stepping Stones, the book of interviews with Seamus Heaney conducted by Dennis O’Driscoll, the poet does not give the impression that he actively seeks out music, whether

Berliner Ensemble, Berlin12 April 2009Pairing the director Robert Wilson and the musician Rufus Wainwright in a theatrical production to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets was a courageous commission

A crisis of identity in choral music is leaving it professionally sidelined and with little status in society

Yannis Kyriakides, whose online installation forms part of Sound and Music’s first season Sound and MusicSound and Music has launched its first season.

The discourse around music serves only to divide us

Have we lost clear sight of the purpose of music criticism?

Cool Steel ArmyPsychoNavigation Records PSY 028A new album from Roger Doyle, and with it another change of label for the perpetually nomadic composer.

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra; Robert Houlihan (conductor); Matthew Jones (viola) National Concert Hall, Dublin3 February 2009Letterkenny-born composer Derek Ball’s dalliance with composition was interrupted by a thirty-five year stint as

Tanya Tagaq Gillis (vocals), Michael Edwards (laptop), Kenton Loewen (percussion)Café Oto, London16 February 2009Tanya Tagaq Gillis works in a variety of vocal styles, from her native idiom of Inuit throat singing, to super-charged and loos

Elaine Clark (violin), Martin Johnson (cello), David James (cello), Madeleine Staunton (flute), Paul Roe (clarinet), Roberto Oliveira (percussion), Tine Verbeke (soprano), Jane O’Leary (piano)Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin15 February 20

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra Alexander Anissimov (conductor) National Concert Hall, Dublin6 February 2009Pairing two objects side by side, by design or by accident, illuminates and reflects something in, and of, the other.

Christopher Fox asks how we can best support new music in a recession

Is the party over for opera?

Silenced VoicesMode Records, Mode 198The Barton Workshop; Elisabeth Smalt (viola); Frank Denyer and James Fulkerson (musical directors) Silenced Voices is the second Mode Records disc devoted to the work of English composer Frank Denyer.