David Flynn (composer)


David Flynn is an Irish composer and musician with a number of major awards and commissions to his name. He is the founder and artistic director of the Irish Memory Orchestra. His recent music is noteworthy for merging the influence of traditional Irish music with contemporary classical music and jazz. He is also an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who works across many genres including classical, jazz, rock and traditional Irish music. He performs regularly on guitar, mandolin, banjo, bouzouki and vocals.

Early experiences

Flynn was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. His early musical experiences included brief periods studying piano and tin whistle, but it was not until his early teens that Flynn really took to music, teaching himself how to play rock guitar. He developed an interest in classical guitar in his mid-teens and taught himself how to read music notation, he also learnt classical guitar by ear from recordings. He composed his first piece for classical guitar aged 16.
Upon leaving school in 1995 he studied rock music at Ballyfermot Senior College, Dublin. Around this time Flynn started composing songs and became a regular performer on the Dublin singer-songwriter scene which spawned some of Ireland's current crop of successful songwriters such as Damien Rice and Damien Dempsey. He was also lead guitarist of the rock band Maize. He later developed a strong interest in traditional Irish music which he learnt through recordings and workshops at various Irish music festivals.

Formal studies

In 1998 Flynn began formal classical music studies at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, initially studying classical guitar on a part-time basis with John Feeley. In 1999 he enrolled in the full-time music degree course at the Conservatory, continuing his guitar studies with Feeley while majoring in composition. Now fully committed to composing, Flynn won the IMRO Composition Award in 2002 at the Feis Ceoil in Dublin for his string orchestra piece Mesh.
While at DIT he co-founded the Dublin Guitar Quartet with fellow students. He graduated in 2003 at which time he left the Dublin Guitar Quartet to move to London where he became the first person from the Republic of Ireland to be accepted onto the master's degree in Composition course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He was awarded bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland, Guildhall Trust and Michael Collins Memorial Foundation to fund these studies. At Guildhall he studied composition with Malcolm Singer and electro-acoustic music with Nye Parry and he formed his own ensemble, the David Flynn Collective. He graduated from the Guildhall in 2004.
He returned to DIT in 2006 where he undertook a research PhD entitled Traditional Irish Music: A Path to New Music. He completed it in 2010.

Professional composition career

2000s

Flynn's professional composition career began in the early 2000s with performances of his music by artists including Jane O'Leary's Concorde ensemble, Rolf Hind and the Dublin Guitar Quartet. He also premiered many of his own guitar works at this time. His works from this period are often influenced by the minimalist music of John Adams, Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
Soon after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2004, Flynn's string quartet piece Slip was selected for the Young Composers Workshop at the 2004 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, which led to Flynn being awarded the 2004 Young Composers Award at the Festival. His prize was a commission to elaborate Slip into his String Quartet No. 2 "The Cranning" for the 2005 festival where it was premiered by the Smith Quartet to the acclaim of critics including Neil Fisher of The Times who praised Flynn for "incorporating traditional Irish music without Hollywood pastiche".
Music critic Michael Dervan of The Irish Times wrote: "Flynn is attempting to bring the influence of traditional Irish music into the hallowed realms of the classical string quartet and moments in the Smith Quartet's performance of this minimalist influenced work gelled to perfection."
Earlier in 2004 Flynn had instigated the foundation of the Young Composers Collective in Ireland. Flynn announced the YCC with an article in the Journal of Music in Ireland in which he criticised established bodies for failing to support young composers. The article caused considerable controversy and debate but ultimately led to the YCC providing a platform for a large number of previously unknown young composers to have their music performed. The YCC has since evolved into the Irish Composers' Collective. Flynn is no longer a member according to the ICC website.
Flynn caused further debate in the JMI in 2005 when his article "Looking for the Irish Bartók" questioned the failure of established Irish classical composers to engage with traditional Irish music and musicians. Despite some harsh criticism of Flynn's ideas from some of the established Irish composers, his article resonated with traditional Irish musicians who had in the past largely been ignored or denigrated by the Irish classical music establishment.
This article directly led to Flynn's contact with the renowned traditional Irish fiddler Martin Hayes and his musical partner, guitarist Dennis Cahill. In 2006, the Masters of Tradition Festival in Cork commissioned Flynn to compose a piece for Hayes and Cahill to perform with the classical violinist Ioana Petcu-Colan. The resulting piece Music for the Departed was premiered at the Masters of Tradition Festival in August 2006 and received its US Premiere in 2010 at the Irish American Arts Center in New York. It was described as "A magnificent new work for fiddle, violin and guitar" by the Irish Examiner.

2010s

Flynn has since worked with Martin Hayes on a number of other projects. In 2010, Hayes premiered Aontacht, a concerto for Irish fiddle and orchestra with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in Ireland's National Concert Hall. The concert also featured a new arrangement of Music for the Departed with a string orchestra added to the fiddle, violin and guitar trio of the original.
Aontacht was widely praised as a ground-breaking work. Journal of Music editor Toner Quinn wrote "The precision of Flynn's writing displayed years of studying the music of Hayes: his style, rhythm, technical ability and aesthetic. At the same time, the composer moved the fiddle-player into unfamiliar territory, compelling him to climb through shifting, plated orchestral accompaniment. Each time Hayes arrived at a plateau, Flynn had spun the map, but Hayes was undeterred, ascending and chasing even harder. It was thrilling, heady and explosive. Brophy danced on the podium. I moved to the edge of my seat."
Irish Times critic Michael Dervan wrote "Flynn’s new Aontacht, premiered by Hayes with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under David Brophy on Wednesday, is no conventional concerto. There’s not really much in the way of dialogue or give and take. It’s a vehicle for a traditional musician, with the orchestra cast in the role of a backing group, a sometimes assertive and noisy backing group, but a backing group nonetheless. And the soloist is worked pretty hard, with hardly a pause for breath. The solo part is unconventional, too – all notated with precision, but not intended to be played as written. It’s more on the lines of a template, which the fiddler can adapt to his own preferred inflections or spur-of-the-moment inspiration. Hayes is one of those players who projects a great sense of long-term purpose. His energy feels as if it’s focused on a point that’s well ahead of wherever he’s actually at. You don’t just want to hear him in the now, you want to stay with him to experience the future he’s so clearly promising. He sustained that unflagging sense of focus through the strange tilt and lilt of Flynn’s melodic writing. And it was in the work’s most unrelentingly busy movement, the finale which the composer describes as an “epic reel which climbs gradually from the depths of anger to the heights of ecstasy", that performer and work seemed most effectively aligned."
Flynn continues to work with traditional Irish musicians in the creation of new concert works. Recent such works include The Forest of Ornaments for flautist Harry Bradley, Five Études for Uilleann Pipes for uilleann piper Mick O'Brien and The Valley of the Lunatics for fiddle player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. These works and others were premiered at the 2011 Masters of Tradition Festival in Cork at a concert devoted entirely to Flynn's music.

Irish Memory Orchestra compositions

In 2012 Flynn founded the Clare Memory Orchestra, a cross-genre orchestra mixing musicians trained in classical music, traditional Irish music, jazz and other styles. Renamed the Irish Memory Orchestra in 2016, the orchestra performs Flynn's compositions and arrangements entirely by memory.
Flynn composed the hour-long cross-genre orchestral work 'The Clare Concerto' in 2013. It was premiered by a 70-piece Clare Memory Orchestra, conducted by Bjorn Bantock, in Glór Theatre, Ennis in November 2013. This project earned Flynn a 2014 Allianz Business to Arts Award nomination alongside the orchestra and project funders Clare County Council.
In 2014 the Crash Ensemble premiered Flynn's composition "Joy" with Flynn and Niwel Tsumbu as electric guitar soloists. The Premiere was conducted by Alan Pierson at Cork Opera House.
This was followed by the premiere of his first opera "Mná Brian Boru", commissioned by Clare County Council to mark the 1000th anniversary of the death of Irish King Brian Boru. This is an unusual opera as it calls for vocalists who sing in the Irish traditional sean nós style rather than a classical singing style. The bi-lingual libretto was written in English by Pádraic O'Beirn and Dave Flynn with Irish translations by Billy Mag Fhloinn. The opera was premiered in St. Flannan's Cathedral, Killaloe in 2014.
Also in 2014, Flynn released a minimalist solo electric guitar album "Winter Variations" on his label Frisbee Records. Texan Critic Andrew Anderson praised the album in TheatreJones.com stating "Flynn takes listeners through a project that extracts an astounding wealth of music from minimal resources." Stephen Graham, writing for Marlbank.net was similarly enthusiastic "Irish guitarist Dave Flynn’s Winter Variations just released is a bit of a discovery, an electric guitar solo album of mainly freely improvised music all based, unusually enough, around the single chord of A Major 9. Flynn’s style is eclectic drawing on a range of musics including Irish traditional music, and pastoral American jazz influences be they Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell, with hints of African music and the minimalism of Steve Reich sewn in for good measure. So plenty here to get your ears around."
2016 saw the premiere of "Calmly Awaiting the End" a work for uilleann pipes and string quartet which Flynn composed after he won the Éamonn Ceannt Commission Competition. It was premiered by Mick O'Brien and the Contempo Quartet in Galway's Town Hall Theatre during the Galway Sessions Festival. The work was selected by RTÉ to represent Ireland at the 2017 International Rostrum of Composers.
Flynn completed his first symphony "The Memory Symphony" in 2017. The symphony is unique in the orchestral repertoire by way of the fact that it was composed specifically to be performed without sheet-music and performances can include any musical instrument. It was premiered by The Irish Memory Orchestra and special guest Mairtin O'Connor in Dublin's Christchurch Cathedral in November 2017.
He has followed this up with two more symphonies completed in 2019. "The Clare Symphony" and "The Vision Symphony".
The "Vision Symphony" continues Flynn's expansion of orchestral possibilities as it was composed as part of a project to enable blind and vision-impaired musicians to perform with orchestras. The premiere, on 26 October 2019, featuring the Irish Memory Orchestra joined by several blind and vision-impaired musicians, was praised as "boundary breaking in a new way" in the Journal of Music. The project was funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and Clare County Council.

Other works and publications

Outside of his recent collaborations with traditional musicians, Flynn's music continues to be performed by major international classical musicians and ensembles around the world including the New Juilliard Ensemble, ConTempo Quartet, Dublin Guitar Quartet, guitarist John Feeley and saxophonist Gerard McChrystal.
Violinist Irina Muresanu released the first recording of Flynn's solo violin work "Tar Éis an Caoineadh" on her 2018 album "Four Strings Around the World" on Sono Luminus and she regularly performs it in her concerts. The recording and her performances of the work have been acclaimed in the Boston Globe, Limelight and many other publications.
Flynn has had radio specials dedicated to his music on WNYC New York's New Sounds show hosted by John Schaefer and RTÉ lyric fm's 'Cross Currents' series on Irish composers.
His primary publisher is his own company Frisbee Publications, however Four Études for Five Fingers have been published by Mel Bay and Toccata for Obama is published by Reed Music.

Traditional music career

During his time in London, Flynn became strongly involved with the London Irish traditional music scene, performing regularly in concerts and sessions with some of the leading Irish musicians in London. Flynn remained in London until the beginning of 2006 when he returned to live in Ireland.
Flynn continues to build a parallel career as concert music composer and multi-genre performer. His debut recording 'Draíocht', a mix of traditional Irish music and new compositions and songs based on the tradition, was released late in 2006. Most of the songs on the album were co-written with the poet/lyricist Pádraic Ó'Beírn. Also featured on the album are some of his regular musical partners including fiddler Liz Coleman, percussionist Aidan Dunphy, bassist Brian O'Toole and guitarist Ciarán Swift. The album was co-produced by Flynn with engineers Manus Lunny and Paul Thomas. Writing in Irish Music Magazine, critic John O'Regan says, "Draíocht is one of the most surprising debuts to hit my ears in ages... An interesting and intriguing collection from a tunesmith, instrumentalist and composer, Dave Flynn is a name to conjure with and Draíocht is very definitely worth an open-minded listen."
Flynn's second album, Contemporary Traditional Irish Guitar, was released in 2009 on Frisbee Records. The album contains completely solo guitar versions of music by some of the best traditional Irish music composers of the 20th Century, most particularly Paddy Fahey, 20 Fahey compositions feature on the album. There is also music by Ed Reavy, Liz Carroll. Charlie Lennon, Larry Redican and Tommy Peoples. One of Flynn's own compositions, The Mahatma of the Glen, a tribute to the late fiddle player James Byrne, also features. This is a reworking of three of the sections of his earlier piece Music for the Departed. The album has received considerable critical acclaim.
In subsequent years Flynn became a renowned traditional guitar accompanist, playing with many of the leading Irish traditional musicians including Martin Hayes, Paddy Glackin, Liz Carroll, Máirtín O'Connor and Tommy Peoples.

Awards