About
David Bremner is from West Cumbria, UK, and moved to Ireland in 1999. In 2013 he completed a PhD in Composition at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (now TU Dublin Conservatoire) with Prof. Gráinne Mulvey. He now lectures in composition at the Conservatoire. With soprano Elizabeth Hilliard he runs the music/text production company Béal. His current work has been based around creating fabrics made from atonal drone textures; algorithmic composition is an interest, at present focused on generative techniques applied to melodic contour and geometrical rhythm.
Recent performances include You window-pierc’d facades by Lina Andonovska (fl) and Elizabeth Hilliard (sop) at the Hugh Lane Sundays @ Noon series (December 2019) and Kaleidoscope (January 2020), Permanent Ritornello by Crash Ensemble in New Music Dublin (March 2019) and Themework by RETRO DISCO in Music Current (April 2019). Other recent composition projects include a commission from UCD Ad Astra Academy to write a piano duet accompanying a video by artist Brian Duggan, music for experiential liturgies in Christ Church Cathedral Dublin, a work for RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and a 2-hour-long cantata performed in 2018, Four, for Baroque instruments, voices and electronics, funded by South Dublin County Council.
With the piper Mark Redmond, David in 2014 released the CD l’air du temps/the spirit of the times, which explores the links between French Baroque music and Irish traditional music; a track was selected by the Contemporary Music Centre to feature on their promotional CD New Music:New Ireland 2. Excerpts have been broadcast on Lyric FM, BBC Radio 3, and the European Broadcasting Network. He frequently works with Irish minimalist poet Billy Mills, most recently on a substantial song-cycle, Logical Fallacies, for Limerick City of Culture (performed by Elizabeth Hilliard and violist Andreea Banciu). In 2012 he received an Arts Council Bursary Award to facilitate a composition for banjo and live electronics, and material for the music/theatre improvisation collective he founded, TheOpenRehearsals. His logic ballad #2 is included on Hilliard’s newly-released solo CD, Sea to the West, produced by Christopher Fox on Métier/Divine Art Records.
David also has a busy career as a performer; he was Assistant Organist at Christ Church Cathedral Dublin until 2019, and has played with ensembles such as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, and Opera Theatre Company. His music is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre.
David Bremner 
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