Neil Martin

Belfast-born Neil Martin is a composer and musician with an international reputation who enjoys a most varied and rewarding career encompassing dance, opera, theatre, film, television, radio, concert hall and studio. Recent works include the RTS-winning score for a 90-minute tv film, Lost Lives (2020); Sweeney (2018), for singer, narrator and orchestra, based Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray; an octet, The Helping Hand (2017); a score for Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis (2017); along with librettist Glenn Patterson, an opera – Long Story Short: The Belfast Opera (2016).

Other significant works include this is an Irish dance (2015) a duet for dancer and cellist, co-created and performed with Jean Butler; the choral symphony OSSA (2007). His most recent work, a violin concerto, d’allombra, written during lockdown, is scheduled for its world premiere in 2022. A cellist and an uilleann piper, Neil has collaborated with many leading artists, from Liam O’Flynn, Bryn Terfel, Sam Shepard, Christy Moore, Stephen Rea, Josh Groban, Jean Butler and Barry Douglas to the LSO, RPO and all the principle orchestras in Ireland.

He has scored music for plays on Broadway, in the West End and in Europe, and has contributed to more than a hundred albums. Performance venues range from Carnegie Hall to the Palazzo Vecchio and his ground-breaking work with the West Ocean String Quartet has been lauded globally, and beyond – their recordings have been played aboard the International Space Station and the most recent album, Atlantic Edge, was released in April 2020.
www.neilmartinmusic.com