Year: Oct 2023
Voices: SATB Choir
Duration: 3:50″
Text: English, by Tim MacGabhann © 2023, used with permission
Difficulty: 3
Performance History: Winner of the 2024 Seán Ó Riada Competition. Premiere by Chamber Choir Ireland on 3rd May 2024 at the Cork International Choral Festival.
Festival Announcement: Read here.
RTÉ Article: Read here.
YayCork Article: Read here.
BBC Radio Ulster Classical Connections Interview: Listen here.
About: It’s an honour to have been chosen as the winner of this year’s Seán Ó Riada Competition for my collaboration with author Tim MacGhabhann: Gallagher. I’m looking forward to working with Chamber Choir Ireland again, as they bring such a rich sound and interpretive nuance to new compositions. I met Tim when we were both resident artists at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and we bonded over a mutual love of the guitarist Rory Gallagher. My pieceis a homage to Gallaghers’s music and weaves several quotations from his work into a musical texture that plays off the rich imagery in Tim’s poem. I’m excited that the work’s premiere will be part of the Cork International Choral Festival, especially given the close link between Gallagher and Cork, his childhood home and burial place.