The National Concert Hall has announced young Irish bass-baritone Padraic Rowan as winner of the Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award for 2016. 

Rowan receives a bursary of €5,000 towards his singing career and will have the opportunity to perform a solo recital at the National Concert Hall next year.

Twenty-six year old Rowan graduated from the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 2013 with a Masters in Music Performance and is currently studying with Robert Dean in London. A Jerwood Young Artist at the 2014 Glyndebourne Festival, Rowan made his Wigmore Hall debut last year and this year plans to join the Opera Studio of Oper Stuttgart in Germany, performing a number of roles across the 2016/17 season.

Padraic Rowan commented: 

I am absolutely thrilled to receive this year’s Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award. In September, I move to Germany to join the Opera Studio of the Staatsoper Stuttgart and this bursary will help enormously with the associated costs of living abroad. I look forward to returning to the National Concert Hall in 2017 for my solo recital.

The Greevy Award was set up in 2010 in honour of Irish mezzo-soprano Bernadette Greevy (1940–2008). Former winners include soprano Roisín Walsh, mezzo-soprano Gemma Ní Bhriain, soprano Jennifer Davis, mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly, soprano Aoife Miskelly and baritone Gavan Ring.

The judges of the award were soprano Cara O’Sullivan; conductor and Artistic Director of Wide Open Opera, Wide Open Music and Opera Theatre Company, Fergus Sheil; and Simon Taylor, CEO of the National Concert Hall.

For more on Padraic Rowan, visit http://www.padraicrowan.com