Irish composer Ciaran Hope studied composition at the DIT Conservatory of Music with Joseph Groocock and Eibhlis Farrell, and at the Prague Conservatory with Ladislav Kubik before attending the UCLA film scoring programme. The composers burgeoning career was recently recognized by American royalty association BMI, who awarded him a place on their prestigious Conducting Workshop where a select group of 8 composers from their 400,000 membership, were given the opportunity to spend two weeks working intensely with a conductor and live musicians.
A recipient of numerous composition awards including the International Solstice Composition Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship in Film Music, a National Training Commission for Film and Television Bursary, an Arts Council of Ireland Postgraduate Award and the IMRO prize at the RTÉ Musician of the Future, his music was also a finalist at the International Clarinet Association Composition Contest, and the International Song for Peace Contest while his work on the Hollywood feature film The Insider was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
His music has been performed at the Electro-acoustic Music Festival of Cadiz, the Symposium of Brazilian Computer Music and the Logan Chamber Music Series in the Chautauqua Institute, New York while his film scores have been heard at over 40 International film festivals.
He has given master classes on composing for film at a variety of venues including Trinity College Dublin, the Dundalk Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado at Denver and the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. His first album, Etude in Film Score, made the top 40 sales at CDBaby.com in its first month and a track from the album was selected for inclusion on an exclusive, limited release CDBaby promotional CD due to the album’s success.
He has received commissions from organizations and ensembles such as the Czech Clarinet Quartet and Latvian Ministry of Arts and Culture as well as a commission for children’s string orchestra, which premiered on the main concert stage at Euro Disney and the 2010 score for the Hollywood feature film Truth About Kerry. He was recently awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Project Bursary Award, to write a violin concerto for the celebrated Irish violinist Cora Venus Lunny.
I think right now its the juxtaposition of tonality and atonality that fascinates me. I like music to feel organic and unexpected, with melodies taking unexpected twists and turns without much warning but somehow, feeling familiar. The texture I'm chasing could be sometimes referred to as atonal tonality....