Neil Martin

Belfast-born Neil Martin grew up in a household where his parents' musical tastes ranged from Bach and Mozart to The Beatles and Ry Cooder, from Kid Ory and Seamus Ennis to Louis Armstrong, Sean O Riada and Bessie Smith. A cellist and an uilleann piper, he was encouraged to play both traditional and classical music from an early age. Among his teachers were piper Liam O Flynn and cellist Richard Markson, the latter a pupil of Tortellier and Fournier. A Music and Celtic Studies graduate of Queen's University, Belfast, Neil has since enjoyed a most varied and rewarding career that encompasses composition, performance and production.

Commissions so far in 2009 include a feature film score - "Hell's Pavement"; "An Indigo Sky" for string quartet; a dance project based on TS Eliot's "Four Quartets"; currently writing music for theatre and television, and developing two operas.

Composition for television, film and radio includes Trevor Griffiths' RTS award-winning feature-length television drama Food for Ravens (1997), various short dramas, documentaries and series for BBC, C4 and RTE and many radio dramas. Neil has composed and directed music extensively for theatre (Field Day, Tinderbox, Dubbeljoint, Prime Cut, Lyric, Gaiety, OMAC, Ulster Youth), notably Stephen Rea's award-winning production of Northern Star (1998) and Marie Jones' Women on the Verge of HRT (West End 1995). He wrote music for the Tinderbox production, Convictions, which won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production in 2000.

In 2007 Neil was commissioned to write a choral symphony to mark the 400th anniversary of The Flight of the Earls. Called "ossa", it was composed for orchestra, solo boy treble and 120 voice chorus, and was premiered with the Ulster Orchestra and the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, under David Brophy. A BBC television documentary on Neil's writing of this piece over 12 months or so was screened just prior to the premiere.

Other major commissions include no tongue can tell - a major work for uilleann pipes and symphony orchestra. The 43-minute work opened the Belfast Festival at Queen's in 2004, featuring Liam O'Flynn as soloist; Also, a trio for Music Network in Dublin, Soundings; a chamber trio for Lyric FM; an operatic collaboration with Pauline McLynn for Opera Theatre Company; Oilean na Marbh, a song cycle for Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill and the West Ocean String Quartet, for Templebar Cultural Trust in Dublin.

In 1999, along with Seamus McGuire he formed The West Ocean String Quartet. Their music lies somewhere in the worlds between classical and traditional and Neil composes and arranges most of their music. The quartet's debut CD, Unwrapping Dreams, was released to very considerable critical acclaim in July 2004.

In 2003 his quintet for flute and string quartet, The Guiding Moon, with The Chieftains' Matt Molloy on flute, was premiered in Dublin's National Concert Hall. Some Vague Utopia, a work on the life of WB Yeats and written for the quartet, was a commission from Sligo County Council and the Sligo International Choral Festival in 2003.

Other compositions for the West Ocean include Droichead na nDeor (The Bridge of Tears) (2000), for string quartet and guitar, a commission from the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, and Altú ( 2001), a setting of four of Cathal O Searcaigh's poems for the poet's voice and string quartet. The quartet's most recent CD, The Guiding Moon, was released in October 2006 to huge acclaim at home and abroad with rave reviews in New York, Chicago, France and Australia. Plans are afoot for them to tour Japan next year, as well as to return to America.

Neil has worked with many leading musicians, as producer, arranger and performer, both on stage and in the studio - these include Christy Moore, Liam O'Flynn, The Dubliners, Maura O'Connell, The Chieftains, Matt Molloy, Sean Keane, Brian Kennedy, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (Neil was soloist in his composition for pipes and orchestra, Flowansionnamare), Altan, Mary Black, Eimear Quinn, Donal Lunny, Roisin O'Reilly and De Danann. He has contributed to more than 100 albums and his music has taken him throughout Europe and North America, including performances in Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.

He has recorded with The London Symphony Orchestra and guested with Bryn Terfel at the Classical Brit Awards and performed alongside him to 40,000 people in Hyde Park on the closing night of the Proms, 2003. (Neil was the featured soloist, on pipes and whistle, on Bryn's hugely successful Shenandoah). He has also performed with both the Irish and English Chamber Orchestras, and has recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Neil Martin's debut uilleann pipe album, A Celtic Heart, was released on Universal Records (UCJ) in 2004. He is published by peermusic. Married with four children, he lives in Belfast.

Management: Olav Wyper
SMA Talent Ltd
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olav@smatalent.com

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