March 16, 2014 Comments Off on
Hello, I am David Bremner, a composer, pianist and organist based in Dublin, Ireland. On this website you will find recordings and videos of most of my recent works, and information about my background and future performances.
News about upcoming projects/new recordings/etc will be added as and when in the blog section of the site below; recordings/scores of existing pieces are archived in the sections to the left. I hope you enjoy looking around the site, and do contact me at davidbremner at hotmail.com if you have any queries. Scores may be obtained from me or from the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin (www.cmc.ie)
Mixed Circuits
October 25, 2022 § Leave a comment
Very much looking forward to the upcoming release of my double-album Mixed Circuits on the Farpoint Recordings label. Here is some information about the launch:
Launch of David Bremner’s portrait album Mixed Circuits
Sundays @ Noon Series at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin: December 11th 2022, 12pm

Each work on this double-album is a cycle of several short movements or panels, investigating a single impulse: the exploration of a minimal, drone aesthetic through an atonal harmonic fabric of continuous gradual unfolding.
Conceived in partnership with Farpoint Recordings as an intensive exploration of cyclic form, and recorded and mixed/mastered by Farpoint’s David Stalling, the release features various chamber music combinations of four stellar performers: Andreea Banciu (viola), Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano), Paul Roe (clarinet) and Izumi Kimura (piano). The composition and recording process were supported by funding from the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
This launch programme presents the world premiere of the most recent work on the album, Possible Vignettes, and an excerpt from Bremner’s 2014 song-cycle Logical Fallacies for soprano and viola on texts by Irish poet Billy Mills, a long-standing collaborator of Bremner’s.
Programme
Introduction by Dr Paul Roe
Possible Vignettes
world premiere
composed 2017-2022
Andreea Banciu (viola), Izumi Kimura (piano), Paul Roe (clarinet)
Logical Fallacies, movement 5
composed 2014
Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano), Andreea Banciu (viola)
texts by Billy Mills
Commissioned by Limerick City of Culture 2014
Tickets will be available from https://www.hughlane.ie/forthcoming-sunday-concerts closer to the date.
You window-pierc’d facades
April 19, 2020 § Leave a comment
Lina Andonovska (fl) and Elizabeth Hilliard (sop) performing the stochastic construction/reduction piece You window-pierc’d facades at Kaleidoscope on 01/01/2020
I’ve recently added much material to the Compositions part of the site, including Themework (RETRO DISCO at Music Current 2019), Permanent Ritornello (Crash Ensemble at NMD2019), Alternatives (Kirkos) and Loop Walks (ensembÉal)
Contour
July 12, 2019 § Leave a comment
Over the last year or two I have been focusing on research into the area of melodic contour (the ups and downs of a melody without reference to the actual pitches). This was a project funded by a Bursary from South Dublin County Council, for whose support I am grateful. It culminated in the performance of my cantata Four (see previous post) on a long poem by Billy Mills. I have been investigating structures that foreground contour itself rather than the melodies, and am deriving larger structures from contour motifs by means of fractal, generative techniques.
What I like about this technique are its implications of im-perfectionism. Current microtonal practice tends to focus on creating definite subdivisions of the octave, often employing theoretical reasoning to justify the choice of these fixed subdivisions (eg. just-intonation vs temperament). By employing the same contour patterns over a contracting pitch area, this contour technique can make explicit fine-tuning as a never-ending process without a goal. It applies the aesthetic of drone music to the modernist technique of endless, developing variation.
As a theme in Four is the life-cycle of a leaf, each part of the unfurling process implicit in embryonic form in the part preceding it, these fractal/generative contour techniques seemed nicely appropriate. Nothing in nature repeats exactly.
For those who appreciate such things, below is a video of one of the patches I developed for Four in operation. One of the features I like of this particular patch is that it’s possible to select a small portion of one of the generated ‘branches’, and start again afresh generating a fractal, but using the distinct properties of the ‘branch’.
October 15, 2016 § Leave a comment
Over the last year or so, I have been working on combining self-similar/fractal techniques (many that I found through Tom Johnson’s excellent book Self-Similar Melodies) with serialism (a technique I had never previously felt the need to explore but has suddenly interested me). Really happy with how this is going; the first finished piece was Developing Variations (can be found here in the recordings section- Paul Roe and Elizabeth Hilliard’s performances are really special), and I am currently working on focus, evasion for the Clarion Trio; a piece with lots of little movements that all have exactly the same shape, but different material.
October 15, 2016 Comments Off on
logic ballad #2: The guarded tourist makes the guide the test is included on this CD on the Divine Art/Métier label, produced by Christopher Fox. Performance by Elizabeth Hilliard. Out now! The relevant page on the Divine Art website is:
http://www.divineartrecords.com/CD/28551info.htm
October 22, 2015 § Leave a comment
A performance of my work for plucked-string orchestra Half-Happening by the NRW JugendZupfOrchester conducted by Annika Hinsche, at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 11/10/15. Looking forward to writing new works in 2016 for Annika (solo mandolin), and for trioLogie, a trio from the orchestra (mandolin, mandola, guitar).
Logical Fallacies
August 8, 2015 § Leave a comment
Here are a few excerpts from my recent song-cycle of poetry by Billy Mills, Logical Fallacies. The performers are Andreea Banciu (viola) and Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano).
Manor Street
gate
walk
garden
snails
trike
blue
trough
float
stairs
string
cards
school
lodge
street
gate
This song
this song is not
the world is
this song is not
the world
(For Larry)
a poem
is always a poem
a moth
a moth
even
a stranger
caught
in a room
finding
no exit
in a park
by a river
in another city
not the one I was born in
not the one I live in now
a city at war
with itself
All texts are from Lares/Manes (Shearsman Books, 2009) © Billy Mills
Our previous collaboration, Loop Walks, a work of scored polyphonic poetry, is available from http://hardpressedpoetry.blogspot.ie/ and bealfestival@gmail.com
We’re planning to work on another project this year…
August 8, 2015 § Leave a comment
Interesting project here from the Association of Irish Composers, ‘Composers’ Commentaries’ a live discussion alongside the recording and score of a new work.
The subject in this one is my piece Gap Static, performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gavin Maloney. Interview by Dr. Peter Moran.