Irish Chamber Orchestra, Irish National Opera & André de Ridder
Biography Irish Chamber Orchestra, Irish National Opera & André de Ridder
Irish Chamber Orchestra
is Ireland’s most dynamic ensemble. Mixing traditional repertoire with new commissions and collaborating with everyone from DJs to dance companies, the ICO pushes the boundaries of what a chamber orchestra can do. These days, you are as likely to find us at the Electric Picnic as Mozartfest, but wherever we perform, the ICO delivers world-class concerts feted for their energy and style.
Each year, Ireland’s busiest chamber ensemble presents concert seasons in both Limerick and Dublin, embarks on two national tours, and makes a series of prestigious international appearances supported by Culture Ireland. Our Artistic Committee works closely with our Artistic Partners to devise exciting, diverse and innovative programmes, mixing standard repertoire with new work – often specially commissioned – from the best young Irish composers. This versatile approach enables us to appeal to music fans of every stripe while upholding the highest artistic standards.
The driving force behind our recent success is our Principal Conductor/Artistic Partner Jörg Widmann, a composer, conductor and clarinettist whose irrepressible energy and pursuit of excellence has enabled the ICO to expand its horizons, attracting outstanding international performers such as Thomas Zehetmair, Brett Dean, Sheku Kanneh-Mason Tabea Zimmermann, Igor Levit and Elisabeth Leonskaja. The last seven years have seen ICO perform at leading concert halls and festivals across Europe, the U.S. and South America. The ICO released a series of acclaimed recordings on the prestigious Orfeo label with another recording due to be released on Alpha Classics in the Autumn. The ICO was the first Irish Orchestra to complete a three-year residency at Heidelberger Frühling and is currently orchestra-in-residence at Kilkenny Arts Festival.
Widmann’s enthusiasm and commitment is matched by the orchestra itself, led by the ebullient Katherine Hunka, and comprises of 22 outstanding musicians. The ICO’s special rapport, forged by over 20 years of playing – and sometimes singing! – together, creates the unique sound that has captivated audiences all over the world.
The orchestra enjoys outstanding support. The enthusiasm and forward thinking of CEO Gerard Keenan has been instrumental in realising some of the ICO’s most exhilarating collaborations, while the board, chaired by Aibhlín McCrann, comprises members whose diverse professional expertise is matched by their determination to realise the orchestra’s vision.
At the heart of this vision is the belief that music is for everyone. That is why the ICO has implemented an ambitious and far-reaching strategy that aims to take music out of the concert hall and into the local community, inspiring children to try music for themselves, and supporting them on their journey from first lesson to public performance.
Our ground-breaking initiative, Sing Out with Strings (SOWS), offers primary school children in Limerick the chance to learn free music. Now in its eleventh year, the project has been hailed as a model of social inclusion, offering opportunities for young people, developing key life skills and providing tangible long-term benefits for participants, their families and the wider community. The success of SOWS has inspired us to set up a youth orchestra, the ICOYO, which provides aspiring musicians aged 12 to 18 with the support they need to grow.
The ICO is taking all of this a step further, providing free music across our country and beyond with a new ground-breaking and freely available online teaching resource, Sing Out With Strings Online. However, it doesn’t stop there: the orchestra has made its home at the University of Limerick for over 20 years, and UL’s MA in Classical String Performance is run under the auspices of the ICO – providing a rigorous programme with close, “hands-on” contact to the orchestra, its visiting directors, soloists and guests.
The ICO is orchestra-in-residence at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, and is funded by The Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Irish National Opera
As Ireland's national opera company, we produce high-quality, accessible opera in venues throughout Ireland and overseas.
Opera has the power to move and inspire and our mission is to give everyone in Ireland the opportunity to experience this.
We are dedicated to an unprecedented commitment to showcasing internationally-acclaimed, world-class Irish opera singers alongside guest artists from all over the world. We are also committed to maximising public engagement with opera, brokering and sustaining key institutional partnerships and ensuring strong leadership and a sustainable governance structure.
In its first 24 months INO produced 72 performances of 14 operas in 24 Irish venues. We look forward to many more in 2020 and beyond.
André de Ridder
is the newly-announced G the Theater Freiburg, beginning his tenure in September 2022. He is in demand for his impressive stylistic versatility, from baroque to contemporary music. His projects and collaborations have taken him to orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orchestre de Paris and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.
De Ridder starts the 2021/2022 season with a six-concert tour of Germany with Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, in a typically adventurous programme of works by Bryce Dessner, Nicole Lizée, Mozart and Schumann. He also makes debut appearances with the Orquestra Gulbenkian and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and returns to Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Concertgebouworkest. He also continues his curatorship and performances of ‘Unclassified Live’ at London’s Southbank Centre, a series of genre-defying performances, based on the BBC Radio 3 programme. This is co-curated and presented by the programme’s presenter Elizabeth Alker.
The 'livewire conductor' (The Times) is equally active in the field of opera and music theatre, forming close relationships with some of the most prominent opera composers of our time, including Kaija Saariaho, Daníel Bjarnason, Michel van der Aa and also performing repertoire works such as ‘The Magic Flute’, ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ and ‘Nixon in China’. In recent seasons, he has therefore worked with directors such as Kasper Holten, Barrie Kosky, Peter Sellars, Marco Štorman and Enda Walsh. This season he will return to Theater Basel for a production of Philip Glass’s ‘Einstein on the Beach’ and to Staatstheater Stuttgart for performances of ‘Scenes from Goethe’s Faust’ by Schumann, and furthermore make his debut at Oper Köln, for performances of ‘Der Meister und Margarita’ by York Höller.
In 2013, he founded s t a r g a z e, performing projects ranging from Bach to Beethoven to avant-garde electronics, and contemporary classical music. The group have gained a significant following and are regularly invited by leading concert halls, including the Barbican Centre London, the Kölner Philharmonie and Philharmonie de Paris, plus Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In the current season, they continue to present '(not) Another Beethoven Cycle', a re-examination of all of Beethoven's symphonies, commissioning a host of artists from a diverse range of disciplines to respond to each symphony. The project has so far appeared at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Helsinki Festival, Lucerne Festival and Kölner Philharmonie.
De Ridder's discography also includes the hugely successful ‘Four Seasons Recomposed’ by Max Richter (Deutsche Grammophon) and an album of orchestral music by Bryce Dessner and Jonny Greenwood (Deutsche Grammophon). The Max Richter recording was awarded an ECHO Klassik 'Classic Without Borders' award 2013. De Ridder also acted as producer on the release of 'Africa Express Presents: In C Mali' on Transgressive Records. This followed a trip to Bamako, Mali, with Damon Albarn and his Africa Express project. In Mali, de Ridder initiated and led a recording of Riley's 'In C' with local musicians, joined by travelling western artists including Brian Eno and Damon Albarn.
De Ridder was Artistic Director of Musica Nova Helsinki until 2021, and in 2018 was the recipient of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his work as Artistic Curator of London's Spitalfields Festival.
