David Flynn (composer)
[2] He is also a multi-instrumentalist who works across many genres including classical, jazz, rock and traditional Irish music, with guitar being his main instrument.
[6] Around this time Flynn started composing songs and performed on the Dublin singer-songwriter scene, including at Dave Murphy's "famous Tuesday night gigs" that helped then up-and-coming musicians like Glen Hansard, Damien Dempsey and Declan O'Rourke.
Now fully committed to composing, Flynn won the IMRO Composition Award in 2002 at the Feis Ceoil in Dublin for his string orchestra piece Mesh.
He graduated in 2003 at which time he left the Dublin Guitar Quartet to move to London where he became the first person from the Republic of Ireland to be accepted onto the master's degree in Composition course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
[9] At Guildhall he studied composition with Malcolm Singer and electro-acoustic music with Nye Parry and he formed his own ensemble, the David Flynn Collective.
[11] Flynn's professional composition career began in the early 2000s with performances of his music by artists including Jane O'Leary's Concorde ensemble,[12] Rolf Hind[13] and the Dublin Guitar Quartet.
His works from this period are often influenced by the minimalist music of John Adams, Philip Glass and Steve Reich and they have been published by Mel Bay.
2 "The Cranning" for the 2005 festival where it was premiered by the Smith Quartet to the acclaim of critics including Neil Fisher of The Times who praised Flynn for "incorporating traditional Irish music without Hollywood pastiche".
Flynn announced the YCC with an article in the Journal of Music in Ireland (JMI) in which he criticised established bodies for failing to support young composers.
The article caused some debate but ultimately led to the YCC providing a platform for a large number of previously unknown young composers to have their music performed.
[21][22][23] This article directly led to Flynn's contact with the renowned traditional Irish fiddler Martin Hayes and his musical partner, guitarist Dennis Cahill.
In 2006, the Masters of Tradition Festival in Cork commissioned Flynn to compose a piece for Hayes and Cahill to perform with the classical violinist Ioana Petcu-Colan.
The concert also featured a new arrangement of Music for the Departed with a string orchestra added to the fiddle, violin and guitar trio of the original.
At the same time, the composer moved the fiddle-player into unfamiliar territory, compelling him to climb through shifting, plated orchestral accompaniment.
"[27] Irish Times critic Michael Dervan wrote "Flynn’s new Aontacht, premiered by Hayes with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under David Brophy on Wednesday, is no conventional concerto.
[32][33] 2016 saw the premiere of "Calmly Awaiting the End" a work for uilleann pipes and string quartet which Flynn composed after he won the Éamonn Ceannt Commission Competition.
[10] For his residency Flynn composed two new works "Harp-Lute" for harp duo and 'The Farmleigh Tree Alphabet', for SATB choir was set to the poetry of Theo Dorgan.
[37] Dorgan was one of several artists to accept Flynn's invitation to participate in the festival, including Stephen Rea, Paddy Glackin, Laura Snowden and Mick O'Brien.
The premiere, in October 2019, featuring the Irish Memory Orchestra joined by several blind and vision-impaired musicians, and was praised as "boundary breaking in a new way" in the Journal of Music.
[52] Based in County Clare on the west coast of Ireland,[53] the orchestra has performed at the Jeonju Sori International Festival of Traditional Music in Korea, Moscow Christmas Festival and at the National Concert Hall, Dublin in collaboration with Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.
[5] Violinist Irina Muresanu released the first recording of Flynn's solo violin work "Tar Éis an Caoineadh" on her 2018 album "Four Strings Around the World" on Sono Luminus and she regularly performs it in her concerts.
[59][60][61][62][63] Flynn has had radio specials dedicated to his music on WNYC New York's New Sounds show hosted by John Schaefer[64] and RTÉ lyric fm's 'Cross Currents' series on Irish composers.
