Music Recording Assistance awards recipients announced
MAYO County Council’s arts service has announced Conor Walsh and Aidan Bolger as the recipients of this year’s Music Recording Assistance Awards.
The response to the call for applications has shown once again the breadth and the quality of music-making in the county. The field included a fantastic cross section of genres, and the high calibre of applicants made the selection difficult work for the assessment panel.
Conor Walsh is a minimalist piano and electro-acoustic composer from Swinford. He began composing as a teenager, writing short piano pieces on an old piano that sits in the reception room of a 100-year-old hotel.
Inspired by the wild Mayo landscapes, Conor’s work is dramatically stark yet soothing, melancholic yet hopeful. His compositions draw from a variety of genre’s that span Minimalist to IDM, Chopin to Tool.
Conor has performed at many festivals and his music has been used for film and television. He appeared on TG4’s Ceol ar an Imeall and opened for Hozier’s Irish tour in Waterford, Cork and Limerick in 2013.
Aidan Bolger is from Castlebar and has been playing music since he was 14. His music has a broad spectrum of influences, including rock, country, blues and punk, and he likes to inject humour into his lyric writing.
He has always had a keen interest and desire to write, record and play his own music and recently, through the Jam Shugar sessions, he has had increased opportunities to perform original material live. The response has been very positive.
This award will give Aidan the opportunity to record and release a single in 2016, and he is planning a tour after the release.
The Music Recording Assistance Awards were established to support the recording of original music by musicians living in the county and recipients receive up to €800 towards the costs of an original music recording. The award is open to all genres of music and applications are assessed by an independent and impartial panel of music industry professionals.