Frank Corcoran

Irish Composer Awarded Top International Choral Prize by International Federation for Choral Music (IFCM)
Imagine the gargantuan task facing five leading international composers on the jury, working their way through 637 choral compositions from every corner of the globe, to select a First Prize in the International Federation for Choral Music’s Second International Competition for Choral Composition?

After the jury’s lengthy deliberation, Irish-born composer (now living in Germany) Francis Corcoran was selected and awarded First Prize for his stunning choral work Eight Haikus. For his award winning work, Francis has been awarded 5000Euros and a Diploma from the IFCM. The large number of submissions displayed the vast growth in the competition and interest in new choral music from the composition community. The judges were Olli Kortekangas (Finland), Graham Lack (Uk/ Germany), Libby Larsen (USA), John Pamintunian (The Philippines) and Paul Stanhope (Australia).

Fulbright scholar, Frank Corcoran was born in 1944 in Tipperary, and studied at Dublin, Maynooth, Rome and Berlin. His considerable musical output includes chamber, symphonic, choral and electro-acoustic music, through which he particularly explores Irish issues such as language and history. Frank Corcoran has worked with several recognized poets and received numerous national and international awards for his compositions. He is a founding member of Aosdána and currently lives in Hamburg.

25 November 2011 (Friday)
4:00 pm
venue: Royal Irish Academy of Music , Dublin 2, Ireland
composer: Frank Corcoran
work: Clarinet Quintet (premiere . RTE Commission ) and ( 2011 ) A DARK SONG ( Bass Clarinet Solo )
performer(s): Fintan Sutton ( cl and bass cl ), RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet.
note: The composer will be present and will talk about his newest work.

1987 NEW MUSIC PROJECT WEEKEND, Nov. 6 and 7 and 8. Frank Corcoran talks about and plays
“Balthazar´s Dream ” which was “made” at the Technical University Berlin Electronic Studios. Premiere Seoul Festival 1981.

It´ll be soon time to fly south ” ar nós na bhfáinleoga” – the swallows sense there´s sun down there, the sun as a fire-ball, the sun as hope in the face of Black Holes or the “Sea ofHistory / Upon which we all turn / Turn and thrash / And disappear… ” Down below stir the lemons, vipers yawn and brush their teeth. Could be good; keep up the speed, whipping a new-born opening idea for higher strings, keep violas in reserve. My
cellos and bass a burnished brown , seen through certain light, almost olive colour. Keep up composing energy, the will to finish, closure, all initial potentials whacked and whipped and explored and exhausted. Could be a great symphony of light, this one, sounding. My Summer Song Of Strings.

Programm:

John Cage: Five (1988). Netzwerkmusikperformance mit der HAW Hamburg

György Ligeti: Artikulation (1957)
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge (1956)
Jonathan Harvey: Vivos Voco, Mortuos Plango (1980)
John M. Chowning: Turenas (1972)
Hans Tutschku: Rituale (2004)
Kirsten Reese: Hallenfelder (2008)
Sean Reed: What’s the matter with my head (2010)
Joachim Heintz: Ambi-schlagfluss (2005)

Francis Corcoran: Sweeney’s Vision (1997)

Georg Hajdu: In ein anderes Blau (2012)

Still Life with Guitar
Emma Coulthard, flute – Michael McCartney, guitar

The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
Sunday, 17 March 2013, 1 p.m.

In celebration of the shared Celtic heritage of Wales and Ireland, Still Life with Guitar would like to invite you to an exciting free concert of new music for flute and guitar, including works by Welsh composers Mervyn Burtch and Peter Reynolds, plus, for the first time in Britain, works by Irish composers Frank Corcoran, Martin O’Leary and John Buckley.

I was. I am even now terrified by this terrible Atlantic , supposedly so ( ! ) asleep under the altometer of my
sleeping ( ? ) Delta monster as we all ( – i.e. I and the Atlantic ocean… ) flitted, spurted, darted, supremely jetted back to Hamburg from the March 12. 2013 New York Premiere of :
Frank Corcoran´s new : VARIATIONS ON MYSELF ( written and writhed for the North South Chamber Orchestra under its conductor, great MAX LIFCHITZ ) .
Stop. Say it ! Stop! Being born an Irish composer. No, not at all easy, I reasoned , reckoning eleven thousand metres above these terribly indifferent Atlantic waves, their terrible, killing troughs.

NOVA NEPOZNATA GLAZBA – NEW UNKNOWN MUSIC Zagreb 2013

Frank Corcoran: NIKSA GLIGO RENAISSANCE MAN ( A Personal Reminiscence Of Cooperation With Niksa Gligo )

Even the mahogany sheen of the lower strings and the silver glitter of the wind went into it. “My” mere seven tones, ” F R an Cis Es C orcor An” with all their melodic / harmonically spawned
forms unfolded Frank Corcoran´s ” VARIATIONS ON MYSELF ” in the unholy acoustic of conductor Max Lifchitz´s Church of Christ and St. Stephen on Manhattan´s 120th. Street.
It was a new Corcoran work for chamber orchestra, American . Strings´music, metred, but the winds´ lines then not synchronized, that is its rough plan ambling and arguing on to my Endmusik; – but there, over a low held chord ( I kept changing its colouring, of course I would ) the horn, bassoon, clarinet, oboe and finally flute fare well… The work is an ” argument” , a musical one. Boris Blacher, il miglior fabbro in far-off Berlin of my student days, liked to say that a ( good ) composition states at the outset its basic material. When it has exhausted not ( quite – or only – ) its listeners but its material, it finds a way to its final “cadence”.
Well, reflecting with the returning aeroplane´s tail-wind, I did that. Lovely music. Great sound. Combine, twist, run together and disentangle and knot and flow and die.

Issa is grieving / Slice through the poet´s poor feet / His sorrow stinks now.

Issa is smirking / Is God is no thing ? ” Nothing ? ” / Wash his humbly feet.

” Let Justice be done ! ” / Issa stole some from Basho / Yet this was richness .