Associate Composer
Brian Irvine
As he was growing up, Belfast-born Brian Irvine spent a great deal of time cleaning windows for his dad's window cleaning company. It was only after A-levels that he realised he was good at music and thought that being a composer would be a much warmer option. He subsequently went on to win a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston USA and then the University of Surrey and University of Ulster where they made him one of those doctors who is pretty useless when someone breaks a leg.
His music reflects a passionate love of various and opposing genres, including improvised music, contemporary classical, electronica, rock, film music, punk and cartoon scores. His prolific output comprises large-scale orchestral works, operas, chamber music, solo works, theatre and film scores, as well as a constant stream of new work for his own eclectic ensemble.
He has been commissioned by, and worked closely with, many diverse personalities and organisations including Welsh National Opera, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Opera Theatre Company, BBC Concert Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, BBC Television, BBC Radio 4, Ulster Orchestra, Music Network, Live Music Now, Joanna MacGregor, Keith Tippett, Paul Dunmall, Keiji Haino, David Holmes, Paul Dunmall and 4-Mality percussion ensemble to name but a few. He has also received commissions from a number of independent theatre/film production companies and international music festivals.
With his own critically acclaimed 15-piece ensemble he has conducted and performed extensively throughout Europe, appearing at various international music festivals in Germany, France, Malta, Cyprus, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, UK, Ireland, Poland, France, Russia and USA.
In 2003 Brian was awarded Scotland's first New Music Fellowship based at the Tolbooth in Scotland. That same year he became the first Irish composer to win a BBC Radio 3 Music Award for Best New Work. He has also been awarded the Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland 2002, the
Bass Ireland Award 2001 and the Belfast Millennium Arts Award 2002, as well as a PRS Foundation Music Award 2004 and the MCPS Joyce Dixey Award for composition.
Recent major works include:
- Montana Strange: commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for orchestra, ensemble and improviser; premièred in Belfast as part of Music Live.
- The Tailor's Daughter: a children's opera commissioned by Welsh National Opera; premièred in Cardiff, May 2005.
- A Marvellous Medicine: for string quartet and massed young singers commissioned by Live Music Now; subsequently expanded and orchestrated as an Ulster Orchestra commission, March 2007.
- Film scores for the animated films Loocymoon (by John McCluskey) and Horn OK Please (by Joel Simon).
Current projects include a second opera for Welsh National Opera, a large scale work for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, an orchestral ballet commissioned by BBC Radio 3, and several large works as part of his appointment as the Associate Composer for the Ulster Orchestra. 
Brian is a passionate believer in the wider values involved in the creation of new music and has conducted over 500 hands-on composition and improvisation music workshops with nursery, primary, secondary, and third level students, amateurs, professionals, orchestras, disability groups, unemployed, music teachers, choirs, improvisers, alzheimer groups, teenager offenders, rock bands, young, retired, the musical, the not so musical all over Ireland, Europe, USA and more recently in Russia. He was instrumental in establishing the music department at the North Down and Ards College ten years ago and has been the music director for the Prince's Trust NI for the last seven years.
He has recently returned from an extremely successful tour of Russia with his ensemble and has performances scheduled in the UK, Lithuania and America.
He still likes to clean the odd window ... just in case!
For more information, go to www.brianirvine.co.uk