Deirdre Gribbin and Neil Martin Receive Major Arts Awards

Susan McKay, Moyra Donaldson, Neil Martin, Ciaran Scullion of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and Deirdre Gribbin (Photo: ACNI)

Deirdre Gribbin and Neil Martin Receive Major Arts Awards

£15k awards will allow composers to complete new chamber and orchestral works.
 

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has announced that composer Deirdre Gribbin and cellist and composer Neil Martin have each received the organisation’s Major Individual Awards for 2019, worth £15,000 each.

The awards are given in recognition of an artist’s contribution to creative life in Northern Ireland and allow them to produce a substantial ambitious project. Writer Susan McKay and poet Moyra Donaldson also received awards.

Gribbin, from Belfast, will use the MIA to complete two strands of work, the string quartet Dark Matter Hunting and the song cycle Kindersang: Outsider Child. She will work with astrophysicist Professor Priya Natarjan, an expert on Dark Matter, on the first composition. The completed work is due to be performed in 2020 at the West Cork Music Chamber Music Festival, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope.

Martin, also from Belfast, will use the MIA award to compose a new concerto for violinist Maebh Martin, to be premiered in autumn 2020 to mark the launch of a new building for the music department at St Andrew’s University in Scotland.

Previous recipients of the award include composers Ed Bennett, Piers Hellawell, Ian Wilson, Elaine Agnew, Conor Mitchell and Deirdre McKay; and musicians Michael McHale and David Lyttle.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has also just announced a new Creative Industries Seed Fund worth £240,000 to assist entrepreneurs, creative businesses and arts organisations in the North.

For more, visit http://artscouncil-ni.org/news

 
 
 
 

Published on 4 December 2019

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