TY - ADVS
T1 - Concerto for Piano, Keyboards and Orchestra
A2 - Bennett, Edmond
N1 - Irish composer Ed Bennett’s music is performed and broadcast in over 30 countries in venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican and South Bank Centres and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Over the last 25 years he has created a substantial body of work for a variety of contexts including those for the concert hall, opera, dance, installation and film. Recent highlights include “Psychedelia” for the RTÉ NSO and Thomas Adès, “Ausland” for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Reinbert de Leeuw, “Song of the Books” for the Crash Ensemble and five critically-acclaimed portrait discs of his work.
He directs his 10-piece ensemble Decibel, described in The Quietus as “blending the coiled concentration of the best post-minimalism with the ferocity and dynamic range of thrash metal.” His recent portrait CD “Psychedelia” (2020) was described in the Sunday Times as “ebullient, deeply compelling music” and featured in the New York Times as one of their recommended releases of 2020, whilst the Guardian described his work as “unclassifiable, raw-nerve music of huge energy and imagination.”
In 2019 Ed Bennett was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award, the highest honour awarded to an artist from the region. For his body of creative work he received the prestigious Leverhulme Prize for Performing Arts and his music has been twice shortlisted for the Ivor Novello awards. In 2024 he was elected to Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland honouring artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland. He is currently a fellow at the Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Bavaria for the 2024/25 season and is Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. Future projects include new work for New York’s Bang On a Can Allstars and an evening length work for singer Michelle O’Rourke.
PY - 2025/6/6
Y1 - 2025/6/6
N2 - 'Concerto for piano, keyboards and orchestra' is a substantial composition in three parts which was commissioned by RTE and the New Music Dublin festival for pianist Xenia Pestova and the RTE Concert Orchestra. The work takes a novel approach to the piano concerto form by incorporating three different keyboards all performed by the soloist. There is also an experimental approach to tuning using a keyboard tuned a quarter tone apart from the concert piano, a highly unusual approach to the medium and an amplified toy piano, never normally seen used in the context and opening up new sonic possibilities. The work was premiered in the National Concert Hall Dublin as the main commission in a major international festival, it was also broadcast on RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster and streamed internationally.
AB - 'Concerto for piano, keyboards and orchestra' is a substantial composition in three parts which was commissioned by RTE and the New Music Dublin festival for pianist Xenia Pestova and the RTE Concert Orchestra. The work takes a novel approach to the piano concerto form by incorporating three different keyboards all performed by the soloist. There is also an experimental approach to tuning using a keyboard tuned a quarter tone apart from the concert piano, a highly unusual approach to the medium and an amplified toy piano, never normally seen used in the context and opening up new sonic possibilities. The work was premiered in the National Concert Hall Dublin as the main commission in a major international festival, it was also broadcast on RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster and streamed internationally.
UR - https://www.rte.ie/radio/lyricfm/lyric-live/2025/0406/1505490-rte-lyric-live-sunday-6-april-2025/
M3 - Composition
PB - Contemporary Music Centre
ER -