Professor Deirdre Gribbin
Professor Deirdre Gribbin
Deirdre Gribbin is an Irish composer, whose work has been described as “astonishingly accomplished” and “pure magic” and “so powerfully expressive that it communicates its meaning instantly” by Richard Morrison in The Times, for her Aldeburgh produced opera “Hey Persephone!” which won The Arts Foundation Award for Opera, and Northern Arts Outstanding Artist Award. She was appointed as External Output Assessor for the Research Excellent Framework; REF 2020-22.
Research interests and areas of supervision:
- Composition
- The interface between music and theatre audiences
- Music and interactive healthcare technology in practice and rehabilitation hospitals in Canada
- Music and genetics
- Composition as a developmental tool for young adults with cognitive delay
- The music of Per Norgard
- Orchestration and the capacity of acoustic sound
- The role of women in music
- Music written out of conflict
- Audience participation and inclusive in contemporary music experiences
- Music, new plays and dance
Biography
‘Hearing Your Genes Evolve’ for string quartet featuring in a Filmtank Production, ‘The Dark Gene’ was nominated for a Berlinale Film Festival Documentary Prize. Other awards include the Chester Schirmer Fulbright Fellowship, UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers Award for my orchestral work ‘Empire States’, a Leverhulme Fellowship, a Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship, a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, a PRS Women Make Music Award for ‘Reflected Glory’, a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and a PRS Composers’ Award in 2020. Her music has been recorded by Crash Ensemble and for a new film about genetics available on ‘constellations.world’
Her orchestral work was recorded for the lyric fm label ‘Irish Composers Series’ and her chamber music CD, ‘Island People’ was recorded for NMC. Richard Whitehouse in Gramophone wrote “the chamber domain seems ideally suited to her often inward and intimate manner of expression…it traverses a wide emotional range …a release that is cordially recommended to Gribbin admirers and newcomers alike.”