Seán Doherty Recordings

Seán was introduced to music through the Irish fiddle tradition of his hometown of Derry. He read music at St John’s College, Cambridge, after which he completed a PhD in musicology at Trinity College, University of Dublin. He is now an assistant professor of music in Dublin City University. His compositions are frequently commissioned, performed, and broadcast both nationally and internationally.

Seán’s choral works have received many international performances and have garnered numerous awards: he has won the Feis Ceoil choral composition award four times, the Choir and Organ Magazine composition competition twice, the St Giles’s Cathedral Edinburgh anthem composition competition, and the Prix pour une œuvre de création at the international choral festival Florilège Vocal de Tours, France. His choral works have been performed by choirs including the World Youth Choir, the choir of Merton College, Oxford, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, the choir of St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, Grant Park Chorus, Chicago, Laetare Vocal Ensemble, the Mornington Singers, and New Dublin Voices.

Seán has also written much chamber music: he has twice been awarded the Young Composers’ Bursary at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and has won the Jerome Hynes – National Concert Hall composition competition. He was commissioned by the Vanbrugh Quartet to compose his String Quartet No. 3, ‘The Devil’s Dream’ for their Crossings Project, by the West Cork Chamber Music Festival to compose Lament for the Poets 1916 for the Vanbrugh Quartet and soprano Caroline Melzer, and by the EstOvest Festival to compose No Go for Xenia Ensemble and uilleann piper Eoin O’Riabhaigh.

In 2012, he was commissioned by the Legacy Trust UK to compose a chamber opera, Number Seven, for the Cultural Olympiad, part of the 2012 London Olympics, in collaboration with author Carlo Gébler. In 2015, he was selected for the ‘Adopt a Composer’ programme—in association with Making Music, PRS for Music, Sound and Music, and BBC Radio 3—for which he composed Hive Mind, premiered at the Barbican Centre, London by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra. In 2017, he was selected for the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland ‘Composer Lab’ project, for which his piece All Against All was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra, Ireland. In 2021, he was commissioned by the pianist Barry Douglas and Camerata Ireland to compose an orchestral piece to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Clandeboye Festival. Seán is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre. Ireland.