Glucksman Ireland House presents
The Irish Institute of New York Lecture: Grammy-winning composer Bill Whelan on "Irish Music and Identity: A Window and a Mirror"
Thursday, October 15th at 7pm
at Glucksman Ireland House NYU
Bill Whelan, famous as the composer of Riverdance, for which he received a Grammy Award, speaks on how the Irish see themselves, how others view the Irish, and the role that music plays in those perceptions.
Whelan has worked as a composer, arranger and producer for orchestra and in theatre, traditional music, and film. He wrote his first major orchestral suite in 1987, commemorating the film music of Seán Ó Riada, which was conducted by Elmer Bernstein and performed by the National Irish Symphony Orchestra. His commissioned orchestral work, The Seville Suite, received its European premiere performance at the Maestranza in Seville as part of the celebrations for Ireland’s National Day at Expo ’92. His next orchestral work, The Spirit Of Mayo, was performed in 1993 by an 85-piece orchestra in Dublin’s National Concert Hall. Together with the choral group Anúna, this piece also featured a powerful Celtic drum corps and a 200 strong choir.
His compositional work in film includes Lamb, starring Liam Neeson, and the film scores for Some Mother’s Son and Dancing at Lughnasa.
Riverdance was composed especially for the interval act of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. The original seven-minute orchestral piece conceived for hard-shoe Irish dance was televised to a European audience of 300 million viewers. Riverdance The Show had its first performance in Dublin in 1995 and since then it has gone on to play to millions of people world-wide with both the album and video topping the charts around the world.
Whelan is currently working with poet Paul Muldoon on a piece for the New York Metropolitan Opera.