FEDORA -

Donnacha Dennehy

Composer

https://www.donnachadennehy.com/

Donnacha 2 © i

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 19 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 20 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 18 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 16 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 17 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 14 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 15 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 13 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 11 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 12 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 10 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 8 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 9 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 7 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 6 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 4 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 5 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 2 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 3 © Ste Murray

Rehearsal The Second Violinist 1 © Ste Murray

Short Bio

Donnacha Dennehy, composer of the opera “The Second Violinist”, winner of the FEDORA - GENERALI Prize for Opera 2017, is one of the top 10 leading composers whose new operatic works have been most performed in the world over the last seven years (Source: Operabase, 2023).

Donnacha Dennehy’s music is marked by a kind of volatile tonality that travels in and out of an overtone-based focus. His fascination with the way time and light stretch and contract through the seasons of the year in his native Ireland, and the psychological impact of such phenomena, has often influenced the structure of his music generally. There is often a tension between the poetic and the structural in his music. He is attracted to obsessive processes but nearly always breaks them. The intersection between words and music, and the vocal sean-nós (old style) tradition has exerted a strong pull over him too since he was a child. Returning to Ireland after studies abroad, principally at the University of Illinois in the US, Dennehy founded Crash Ensemble in 1997. Alongside the singers Dawn Upshaw and Iarla Ó Lionáird, Crash Ensemble features on the 2011 Nonesuch release of Dennehy’s music, entitled Grá agus Bás. Other releases include a number by NMC Records in London, Bedroom Community in Reykjavik and Cantaloupe in New York. He joined the music faculty at Princeton University in 2014, and now lives in America. In recent years, Dennehy has completed a trilogy of operas with Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel (2015), The Second Violinist (2017) and The First Child (2021). He has also written a kind of “docu-cantata”, The Hunger, for Alarm Will Sound, which was released by Nonesuch in 2019. Augustin Hadelich premiered his new violin concerto in the Netherlands in October 2021.