Donnacha Dennehy

Biography

Donnacha Dennehy (born 17 August 1970) is an Irish composer and leader of the Crash Ensemble specializing in contemporary classical music. According to musicologist Bob Gilmore, Dennehy's "high profile of his compositions internationally, together with his work as artistic director of Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, has distinguished him as one of the best-known voices of his generation of Irish composers".

Career and works

Dennehy was born in Dublin, where he read music at Trinity College where he studied composition with Hormoz Farhat. He continued his studies in music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with support from a Fulbright Scholarship, and earned his master's and doctoral degrees at UIUC. His post-doctoral musical period included a stint at IRCAM, with Gérard Grisey, and studies in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen.
In 1997, Dennehy returned to Dublin and subsequently co-founded the Crash Ensemble, which focuses on the performance and recording of contemporary music. His works for the Crash Ensemble include Junk Box Fraud, Derailed, and For Herbert Brun. He later returned to Trinity College Dublin as a lecturer in music. His 2005 work for chorus and orchestra, Hive, displays his developing interest in microtones and harmonies based on harmonic spectra. His composition Grá Agus Bás, which was premiered in February 2007, incorporated music from the sean nós tradition and was a collaboration with the Irish vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland's state-sponsored academy of artists.
NMC Records in London released the first portrait CD devoted to his music, Elastic Harmonic (NMC D133), in June 2007. In the spring of 2011, Nonesuch released an album with Grá Agus Bás and the Yeats cycle That the Night Come. His first opera, The Last Hotel, an 80-minute chamber work with a libretto by Enda Walsh about a woman planning her suicide, received its premiere on 8 August 2015 in Edinburgh, followed by performances in Dublin, London, New York and Luxembourg. A recording (taken live from the Luxembourg performances) was issued in 2019. The Hunger, about the Great Irish Famine, premiered in June 2016 at a concert performance in Washington DC, and in a staged production in St. Louis and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, all with the orchestra Alarm Will Sound.
Dennehy was a visiting scholar at Princeton University from 2012 onwards. He served as composer-in-residence for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in 2013/14. In the fall of 2014, he joined the faculty of the music department at Princeton University.
He wrote Hard Landing about the "Miracle on the Hudson". It was commissioned by the BBC, first performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on 6 February 2025, and had its radio premiere on BBC Radio 3 on 29 March 2025.

Orchestra / chamber orchestra

Junk Box Fraud (1997)
The Vandal (2000)
O (2002)
Elastic Harmonic (2005); violin and orchestra
Hive (2005); voices and orchestra
Aisling Gheal (2007); voice and chamber orchestra
Grá agus Bás (2007); voice and chamber orchestra
Crane (2009)
That the Night Come (2010); soprano and chamber orchestra
If he died, what then (2012); soprano and chamber orchestra
Disposable Dissonance (2012)
The Hunger [(parts I–IV) 2013]; soprano and chamber orchestra
Three Sean Nós Settings (2013); voice and orchestra
Dirty Light (2013)
Turn (2014)
Memoria (2021); symphony orchestra
Hard Landing (2024)

Small ensemble with voice

Two Yeats Songs (1993); soprano and flute
Hinterlands (2002); two female voices and backing track
To Herbert Brun (2002); voice, saxophone, trombone, double bass, and live electronics
The Weathering (2004); soprano, recorder, percussion, violin, and video
Swift's Epitaph (2008); countertenor and percussion

Instrumental ensemble

Pluck, Stroke, and Hammer (1997); piano quintet
The Traces of a Revolutionary Song (1998)
A Game for Gentlemen Played by Thugs (1999)
Severance (1999)
Ecstasis, full stop (1999); string quartet and backing track
Counting (2000); string quartet and backing track
Derailed (2000)
Composition for percussion, loops, blips and flesh (2002); percussion sextet
Glamour Sleeper (2002)
Streetwalker (2003)
The Pale (2003); saxophone quartet and percussion sextet
The Blotting (2004)
Table Manners (2004); percussion quartet
Mild, Medium-Lasting, Artificial Happiness (2004); saxophone quartet or any quartet of like-sounding instruments
Tilt (2006); electric guitar quartet
Bulb (2006); piano trio
Pushpulling (2007); string quartet
Fold (2008)
STAMP (2008); string quartet
As An Nós (2009)
An Irish Process (2009)
Céad Slán (One Hundred Goodbyes) (2011); string quartet and backing track

Solo/electroacoustic

Work for Organ (1992)
GUBU (1995); tape
Begobs I–IV (1995); piano
Metropolis Mutabilis (1995); tape and optional video (by Hugh Reynolds)
Voitures (1996); oboe and tape
Curves (1997); amplified harp and tape
Swerve (1998); flute and tape
FAT (2000); flute and tape
Mad, Avid, Sad (2000); organ
pAt (2001); piano and tape
[H]interlands (2002); two female voices and tape
PADDY (2003); percussion
BRAT (2000/5); recorder and tape (arrangement of FAT)
North Strand (2007); piano
North Circular (2007); piano
Reservoir (2007); piano
Stainless Staining (2007); piano and backing track
Overstrung (2010); violin and backing track
Misterman (2011); music for a play by Enda Walsh

Open ensemble

Blips and Static (2002); multiple boomboxes
Flashbulb (2006); three melody instruments and one struck instrument
A Fatal Optimist (2008); for any instrumentation

Opera

The Last Hotel (2015)
The Hunger (2016)
The Second Violinist (2017)
The First Child (2021)