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“While others bang on about the besieging of time-honoured genre boundaries by contemporary music, the Brian Irvine Ensemble simply operates as if those boundaries had never even existed” (Irish Times 2008)

Born in Belfast Brian Irvine is currently the Associate Composer with the Ulster Orchestra. He also composes and conducts extensively with his own 12–piece, genre busting ensemble which performs all over Europe, Russia and America at many of the worlds leading music festivals.

His huge body of work includes orchestral works, chamber music, operas, film scores as well as solo and ensemble pieces. He has collaborated with and been commissioned by many diverse musical personalities from opera companies and orchestras to DJs and Japanese rock guitar virtuosos. These have included: Welsh National Opera, Ulster Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, Opera Theatre Company, Wexford Festival Opera, RTE Concert Orchestra, The British Council, BBC television, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, animator Joel Simon, filmmakers: John Mcilduff, Jari Neiminen as well as musicians: Billy Jenkins, Joanna Macgregor, Alexander Sitovesky, Keiji Haino, Paul Dunmall, Keith Tippet, Matt Bourne, Paul Rogers, David Holmes to name but a few.

His music is a wild untamed concoction of all things

He has won a number of awards for his music including the 2006 British Composers Award for his youth opera The Tailors Daughter which was commissioned and premiered by Welsh National Opera. His second youth opera The Calling of Maisy Day was also commissioned by WNO and was premiered in July 2008. His Ivor Cutler inspired piece Interrupting Cutler won the BBC Radio 3 Jazz Award and in 2007 his orchestral work: Secret Cinema was short listed for the British Academy of Composers /BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award. Other major works include the 50 minute epic: Montana Strange for orchestra, large ensemble and solo improviser which was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and has now been performed both by BBC Concert Orchestra and Ulster Orchestra.

He has written and conducted several large scale works for orchestra and singing children including A Marvellous Medicine a song cycle of Roald Dahl poems which has been performed by the Welsh National orchestra and Ulster Orchestra together with several hundred children.

Other awards have included the Bass Ireland Award, and the Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.He was also appointed as the New Music Fellow based at the Tolbooth in Scotland for three years.

He is currently completing several large scale orchestral commissions including a re-interpretation of the Pied Piper story for orchestra and children’s chorus and piece for the Ulster Orchestra to mark the re-opening of the Ulster Hall in Belfast. Feb 2009. His recently completed solo piano piece: Junk Genius: The Klippell Collection was premiered by Isabelle O’connell in Belfast, Oct 2008 as part of the Belfast Festival at Queens.

Together with writer filmmaker and director John Mcilduff he is also completing a major new Wexford Festival Opera commission entitled DUMBWORLD. This new form operatic work will be premiered by the Brian Irvine Ensemble together with a cast of 12 unique and acclaimed opera singers in October as part of Wexford Festival Opera 2009 before going on tour throughout Europe.

Brian is a passionate believer in the wider values involved in the creation of new music and has conducted over 500 hands-on composition and improvisation music workshops with nursery, primary, secondary, and third level students, amateurs, professionals, orchestras, disability groups, unemployed, music teachers, choirs, improvisers, alzheimer groups, teenager offenders, rock bands, young, retired, the musical, the not so musical all over Ireland, Europe, USA and more recently in Russia.

He is generally rubbish at DIY but is a deadly Monopoly player ..be warned!!... and someday when he grows up he is going to become horse racing course bookie.