Donnacha Dennehy

Donnacha Dennehy
Donnacha Dennehy, 2010
Born	(1970-08-17) 17 August 1970 Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Composer
Website	www.donnachadennehy.com

Donnacha Dennehy (born 17 August 1970 in Dublin) is an Irish composer.

Career and works

He read music at Trinity College, Dublin, and graduated with a first-class honours degree. He continued his studies in music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with support from a Fulbright Scholarship, and earned his master's and doctoral degrees at UIUC.^[1] His post-doctoral musical period included a stint at IRCAM, with Gérard Grisey, and studies in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen.

In 1997, Dennehy returned to Dublin, and subsequently co-founded the Crash Ensemble, which focuses on the performance and recording of contemporary music. His works for the Crash Ensemble include Junk Box Fraud, Derailed, and For Herbert Brun. He later returned to Trinity College Dublin as a lecturer in music. His 2005 work for chorus and orchestra, Hive, displays his developing interest in microtones and harmonies based on harmonic spectra. His composition Grá Agus Bás, which was premiered in February 2007, incorporated music from the sean nós tradition and was a collaboration with the Irish vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird.^[2] He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland's state-sponsored academy of artists.

NMC Records in London released the first portrait CD devoted to his music, Elastic Harmonic (NMC D133), in June 2007. In the spring of 2011, Nonesuch released an album with Grá Agus Bás and That the Night Come.^[3] His opera, The Hunger about the Great Irish Famine, premiered in a concert performance in June 2016 at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and in a staged production in St. Louis and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, all with the orchestra Alarm Will Sound.^[4]^[5]

Dennehy was a visiting scholar at Princeton University from 2012 onwards. He served as composer-in-residence for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in 2013/14. In the fall of 2014, he joined the faculty of the music department at Princeton University.

Compositions

Orchestra / chamber orchestra

Junk Box Fraud (1997)
The Vandal (2000)
O (2002)
Elastic Harmonic (2005); violin and orchestra
Hive (2005); voices and orchestra
Aisling Gheal (2007); voice and chamber orchestra
Grá agus Bás (2007); voice and chamber orchestra
Crane (2009)
That the Night Come (2010); soprano and chamber orchestra
If he died, what then (2012); soprano and chamber orchestra
Disposable Dissonance (2012)
The Hunger [(parts I–IV) 2013]; soprano and chamber orchestra
Three Sean Nós Settings (2013); voice and orchestra
Dirty Light (2013)
Turn (2014)

Small ensemble with voice

Two Yeats Songs (1993); soprano and flute
Hinterlands (2002); two female voices and backing track
To Herbert Brun (2002); voice, saxophone, trombone, double bass, and live electronics
The Weathering (2004); soprano, recorder, percussion, violin, and video
Swift's Epitaph (2008); countertenor and percussion

Instrumental ensemble

Pluck, Stroke, and Hammer (1997); piano quintet
The Traces of a Revolutionary Song (1998)
A Game for Gentlemen Played by Thugs (1999)
Severance (1999)
Ecstasis, full stop (1999); string quartet and backing track
Counting (2000); string quartet and backing track
Derailed (2000)
Composition for percussion, loops, blips and flesh (2002); percussion sextet
Glamour Sleeper (2002)
Streetwalker (2003)
The Pale (2003); saxophone quartet and percussion sextet
The Blotting (2004)
Table Manners (2004); percussion quartet
Mild, Medium-Lasting, Artificial Happiness (2004); saxophone quartet or any quartet of like-sounding instruments
Tilt (2006); electric guitar quartet
Bulb (2006); piano trio
Pushpulling (2007); string quartet
Fold (2008)
STAMP (2008); string quartet
As An Nós (2009)
An Irish Process (2009)
Céad Slán (One Hundred Goodbyes) (2011); string quartet and backing track

Solo/electroacoustic

Work for Organ (1992)
GUBU (1995); tape
Begobs I–IV (1995); piano
Metropolis Mutabilis (1995); tape and optional video (by Hugh Reynolds)
Voitures (1996); oboe and tape
Curves (1997); amplified harp and tape
Swerve (1998); flute and tape
FAT (2000); flute and tape
Mad, Avid, Sad (2000); organ
pAt (2001); piano and tape
[H]interlands (2002); two female voices and tape
PADDY (2003); percussion
BRAT (2000/5); recorder and tape (arrangement of FAT)
North Strand (2007); piano
North Circular (2007); piano
Reservoir (2007); piano
Stainless Staining (2007); piano and backing track
Overstrung (2010); violin and backing track
Misterman (2011); music for a play by Enda Walsh

Open ensemble

Blips and Static (2002); multiple boomboxes
Flashbulb (2006); three melody instruments and one struck instrument
A Fatal Optimist (2008); for any instrumentation

Opera

The Hunger' (2016)

Discography

Elastic Harmonic. NMC, 2007 (includes Glamour Sleeper; Paddy; Junk Box Fraud; Elastic Harmonic, pAt, Streetwalker)
Grá agus Bás. Nonesuch, 2011
Stainless Staining. Canteloupe, 2012 (Lisa Moore, piano Stainless Staining; Reservoir)

Notes

↑ "Donnacha Dennehy on "Grá Agus Bás: Love and Death"" (Press release). Princeton University, Fund for Irish Studies. 2012. Retrieved 2015-02-05.
↑ Vivien Schweitzer (2013-05-20). "A Genre, Old and Irish, Is Renewed". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-02-05.
↑ Andrew Clements (2011-05-19). "Dennehy: Grá agus Bás; That the Night Come – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 2015-02-05.
↑ "Review: An Unsatisfying Opera (or Is It a Lecture?)" by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times, 3 October 2016
↑ The Hunger, Brooklyn Academy of Music

External links

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