NCH Announces Winners of Bernadette Greevy Award, Jerome Hynes Award, and Young Musician Award

Clockwise from top left: Julieanne Forrest, Claire O’Connor, Kevin Terry and Susie Gibbons

NCH Announces Winners of Bernadette Greevy Award, Jerome Hynes Award, and Young Musician Award

Soprano Susie Gibbons, composer Kevin Terry, and violinists Julieanne Forrest and Claire O’Connor this year's winners.
 

The National Concert Hall has announced the winners of the Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award, Jerome Hynes Young Composer Award, and Young Musician Award for String Players as soprano Susie Gibbons, composer Kevin Terry, and violinists Julieanne Forrest and Claire O’Connor respectively. 

Gibbons receives a prize of €5,000, plus the €500 Mahler Song Award, and will give a performance at the NCH early next year. For the award she performed Mahler’s ‘Lob des Hohen Verstands’, Handel’s ‘V’adoro, Pupille’ (Giulio Cesare) and Philip Martin’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. The judges were Mairéad Buicke and James Vaughan. 

Gibbons is currently studying for a Master of Performance in Vocal Studies at the Royal College of Music in London. She recently won the Feis Ceoil Nancy Calthorpe Cup for French Mélodie and was a finalist in the Gervase Elwes Memorial Cup.

Musician and composer awards
Julieanne Forrest and Claire O’Connor were both presented with a Young Musician Award for String Players, with Forrest being granted the winning prize of €8,000 and O’Connor a prize of €2,000.

Forrest performed the first movement of Barber’s Violin Concerto Op. 14 and Gershwin’s ‘Ain’t Necessarily So’. O’Connor performed Smetana’s Aus Der Heimat No. 2, Debussy’s Violin Sonata (1st mvt) and Weiniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (3rd mvt). The judges were Mia Cooper and David Daly.

Forrest is sixteen, is a multiple first prize winner at the Feis Ceoil, and studies violin at the RIAM with Dr Fionnuala Hunt. She is concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, the Dublin Youth Orchestra’s Symphony Orchestra and the RIAM Symphony Orchestra. In April 2019, she performed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Concerti Sinfonietta. O’Connor is also sixteen and a student of Dr Hunt. She has won several awards for her playing, including first prize in violin A at the Feis Ceoil in 2019 and the Rhoda Coghill Cup.

Cork composer Kevin Terry receives a prize of €2,500 for the Jerome Hynes Young Composers’ Award as well as a commission for a new work that will be premiered at the NCH in 2020. The judges for the composition award were Brian Irvine and Ann Cleare. Terry studied improvisation with Han-earl Park from 2007 to 2011 and his work has been performed by Kate Ellis, Andrew Zolinsky and the Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble. He studied with John Godfrey and Jesse Ronneau for his BMus at UCC and is currently completing a master’s degree in composition at Cork School of Music with C.S.L. Parker.

Previous winners
Previous winners of the Bernadette Greevy Award include Sinéad O’Kelly (2018), Sarah Brady (2017), Padraic Rowan (2016), Roisin Walsh (2015), Jennifer Davis (2013), Rachel Kelly (2012), Aoife Miskelly (2011) and Gavan Ring (2010). Previous winners of the Jerome Hynes Award include Robert Coleman (2017), David Coonan (2016) Eoghan Desmond (2015) and Alex Dowling and Amanda Ferry as joint winners (2013). The NCH Young Musician Award for String Players is a biennial award and previous winners include Fiachra De hÓra and Callum Owens (2017) and Kevin Jansson and Killian White (2015). 

For more, visit nch.ie

 
 

Published on 4 October 2019

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