Via The Journal Of Music: The National Concert Hall (NCH) has announced that composer Jane O'Leary will receive the institution’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.
The award, which recognises outstanding contributions to Irish musical life, will be presented at a special concert on 24 October that will feature O’Leary’s work Triptych for string quartet and orchestra. It will be performed by the ConTempo Quartet and the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) conducted by Kensho Watanabe.
Listen to The Lyric Feature: The Musician That Is Me - Jane O'Leary in profile
O’Leary’s contribution to Irish music spans more than five decades, ever since moving from America in 1972 when still in her twenties. In 1976, she founded Concorde, Ireland’s first contemporary music ensemble, which has commissioned over 200 works. In 1981, she was instrumental in the founding of the concert promoter Music for Galway, which recently had its 43rd classical music season. O’Leary was also Artistic Director of Music for Galway until 2013, launched the city’s Steinway Piano Trust, and spearheaded the establishment of the Galway Music Residency in 2002 with ConTempo Quartet its first and continuing ensemble-in-residence.
O’Leary has also taught composition and was the first female composer appointed to Aosdána. She served as chair of the Contemporary Music Centre, was a member of the Board of the NCH, and has contributed as a composer and presenter to RTÉ Lyric FM.
Listen: The Luminosa String Orchestra perform Jane O'Leary's Strings in the Air, Songs in the Stones
This is in addition to her work as a composer. Her music has been performed at many events in Ireland and internationally including at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. The RTÉ NSO featured her work from sea-grey shores on their debut tour of the USA in 2003 and this work was recently released by Navona Records on the album Relive (2021). Among her other recordings are the portrait record In the Stillness of Time (2007) and The Passing Sound of Forever (2017), a collection of chamber works. She was featured composer with Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble in Belfast throughout their 2018–19 season and her work beneath the dark blue waves features on their 2021 recording A Terrible Beauty. Writing in the Journal of Music, Mark Fitzgerald described the work as 'an extraordinary demonstration of the sheer range of colour’ it is possible to create with the ensemble.
Finghin Collins and the NSO gave the premiere of her work unfolding soundscapes in 2022, and Triptych received its premiere at the New Music Dublin festival in 2020, performed by the NSO with the Ligeti Quartet. Adrian Smith, writing in the Journal of Music, described it as a work that ‘demonstrated the subtleties of O’Leary’s sensitive ear and refined sense of orchestration’.
Listen: The Navarra Quartet perform Jane O'Leary's the passing sound of forever
Commenting on the Lifetime Achievement Award, O’Leary said she was ‘honoured, privileged, surprised and deeply humbled. I wondered, how did I reach a stage in life where such an award was possible.’
Previous recipients of the NCH Lifetime Achievement Award include The Chieftains, James Galway, Veronica Dunne, Paul Brady, The Vanbrugh Quartet, John O’Conor, Shane MacGowan, John Kinsella and Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin.
The announcement was made as part of the NCH’s new autumn/winter season, which features a range of Irish and international artists including Nicola Benedetti, Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, a 75th birthday concert for Bill Whelan, a world premiere by Rhona Clarke, artist-in-residence Jessie Grimes, Chineke! orchestra celebrating its 10th anniversary, Fedora opera prize-winner Michael Gallen, pianist Paul Lewis, Irish premieres by Bryce Dessner and Errollyn Wallen, pianist Stephen Hough, a 40th anniversary celebration of the NSO Chorus, and a 90th birthday celebration of Arvo Pärt.
For full details on all events, go here, and read more from the Journal Of Music here
