Featured Composer
2024
Gráinne Mulvey is a composer of acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic music. She is interested in composition in all its forms; acoustic and electronic, in the spatialization of sound, real time, live electronics, acoustic and electronic improvised performance practices, installations, game and VR music and collaboration with other disciplines.
She has written for many soloists such as soprano, Elizabeth Hilliard, Martin Johnson, principal cellist of the NSO, Mathias Lorenz, cellist, violinist Darragh Morgan, clarinettist Paul Roe, flautist Joe O’Farrell, pianists Thérèse Fahy, Nathalia Milstein, (winner of the International Dublin Piano Festival 2015,) and Matthew Schellhorn, to name but a few. Ensembles such as Concorde, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, ACME in Chicago, MISE-EN in New York, Sepia in Poland, Airborne in Vienna and orchestras: NSO, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia, UK, and the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra have championed her work.
Her music has been performed, recorded, broadcast globally (notably by RTE Lyric FM, BBC Radio 3, 4 and Resonance FM) and is published by the CMC in Ireland, Prairie Dawg Press, New York, BabelScores, France and Universal Edition. She has represented Ireland at the ISCM World Music Days in 2008, and 2009 and at the International Rostrum of Composers in 1994, 2006 and 2015. Sextet Uno was represented at the Finnish Biennale in 2002 and her piece Round of Applause as part of ROLLER COASTER (2021) ––a collaboration with the artist and curator Fion Gunn, featured in the National Arts Museum of China, from Feb 1st to March 1st, 2022.
She has won various prestigious competitions, notably the RTE Musician of The Future (Composers’ class) in 1994, the Sligo International Festival Composers’ Competition and in 1999, St. John’s Memorial University Award, Waterford and Newfoundland in 2003. She received a “most distinguished musician and special mention” at the IBLA International Foundation Competition in 2016. She is a joint winner with visual artist Mihai Cucu, in the Music Video category of The Cutting-Edge Film Festival 2016, in the USA, for her electronic piece Proclamation and 1st prize winner of the Franz Schubert and the Academia Musica in Vienna for her Cello Concerto-Excursions and Ascents and LUCA for ensemble. She won 1st Prize and Laureate Absolute Winner prize in the IX Smederevo ULIUS International Piano Composition Competition, Category IV, Serbia, for her piano and electronic piece Sun of Orient Crimson with Excess of Light in 2022.
Her pieces have been recorded by the Concorde Ensemble, on the Black Box label. The CMC Volume 7 CD includes her orchestral piece Akanos and her piece Calorescence performed by pianist Thérese Fahy, is on CMC label: New Music: New Ireland Vol. 2. The Gothic CD by Mary Dullea, pianist, includes her piece Étude on the Métier label msv 28549, her CD Akanos is on the Navona label Cat: NV5943 and two vocal pieces sung by soprano Elizabeth Hilliard, are on her Sea To The West CD, on the Métier label msv 28551, issued in November 2016. Her piece for installation Aeolus is on the Métier label 29006, Great Women was released in 2021, MDS 29007. Proclamation was released on the Audior 5 volume of electronic music in Italy, May 2018. She won placements on compilation CDs for her pieces: Interference Patterns, Interstices, and The Shoulder, which were released by RMN Music Recordings in September 2019 and 2020. Her piano piece The Thriving Port of Ros XII was released by the New Ross Piano Festival Committee in September 2018. Diffractions and Phonological Loops were released by Petrichor Records and the Diatribe label released LUCA in 2021. Her latest CD The Tyndall Effect is on the Métier label Mex 77129. She is a member of Donne In Musica and is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s organisation of creative artists.
She holds a PhD from York University, UK and is Professor of Composition at TUD.