Composer

Brian Irvine

Least Like The Other

Biography

Belfast-born Brian Irvine’s unique musical world combines the known and the unknown, the free and the fixed, the schooled and the unschooled. He is driven by a single desire to connect, disrupt, reinvent and reimagine all aspects of life, people, society, art and understanding in any and as many ways possible. His output includes operas, large-scale oratorios, orchestral, ensemble, chamber, solo and dance works as well as film scores, games and installations. Often combining and layering diverse and opposing elements, his music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world by a vast array of performers and organisations including Irish National Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, Welsh National Opera, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Red Note Ensemble, Ulster Orchestra and Joanna MacGregor. He is Co-Artistic Director of the internationally award-winning creative production company Dumbworld, and has collaborated and made work with artists from vastly different disciplines including Seamus Heaney, Cy Twombly, Paul Dunmall, Keiji Haino, Eduard Bersudsky, David Holmes and Jennifer Walshe as well as groups and individuals from all tiers of society, including ex-paramilitaries, young offenders, victims of violence, special needs groups, residential homes, community choirs, gardeners, footballers, bankers, homeless associations, call centre workers and schools. He has won two British Composer Awards as well as the BBC Radio 3 Jazz Award and a Paul Hamlyn Composers Award. He was awarded an MBE for services to music in 2011 and in 2016 became the first Music Laureate for Belfast.

May 2022