Evlana Ensemble

Evlana is a flexible group with programmes ranging from smaller ensemble groups to a sinfonietta sized orchestra. It was founded by composer, Siobhán Cleary in 2015. Evlana places contemporary music at the heart of its programming and provides an opportunity for Ireland’s most accomplished performers and composers to produce and perform their work.

Evlana prioritises music of our time but also engages with works from the early 20th Century, occasionally delving into the repertoire of previous centuries with a particular focus towards neglected works and lesser-known composers alongside audience favourites.

Commissioning new works by Irish and international composers is integral to the objectives of the sinfonietta as well as providing opportunities for repeat performances of recently composed works. Gender balanced programming is a core policy of Evlana and the ensemble is committed to commissioning new works at a 50:50 ratio.

Evlana was awarded Arts Council Project Funding in 2015 for an inaugural concert at the University Church Dublin on Sept 29th. This concert was broadcast on Lyric FM over 4 weeks in November in 2015. The concert featured several pieces which were performed in Ireland for the first time including Changing Light by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s, a haunting dialogue for soprano and flute, Claude Vivier’s shimmering Zipangu for string orchestra and Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist’s Taromirs Tid. Two other works on the programme explored the dynamic between the soprano and string orchestra: Benjamin Britten’s monumental setting of poet Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations and a world premiere Her Kind by Siobhán Cleary, a setting of the Anne Sexton poem.

A Chamber Ensemble concert was held at the National Gallery of Ireland in November 2018 featuring music by Tailleferre, Lili Boulanger, Messiaen, Saariaho and Takemitsu and the Irish premiere of Siobhán Cleary’s Ondine. Parts of this concert were broadcast on Lyric Fm’s Sound Out in Dec 2018. Cleary’s Ondine has since featured regularly on Blue of the Night programmme.

In 2021, Evlana featured in three concerts at the New Music Dublin Festival which included works by Judith Ring, Donnacha Dennehy, Amanda Feery, Gráinne Mulvey, Ian Wilson, Linda Buckley, Elaine Agnew, Deirdre McKay, Raymond Deane, John Buckley and two World Premieres of new commissioned work by Jane Deasy and John McLachlan.

Isabelle O’Connell, piano
Since her Carnegie Hall debut recital in 2002, pianist Isabelle O'Connell has developed an international career as soloist and chamber musician that has taken her around the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, to venues such as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Art Institute, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, St David’s Hall, Cardiff and the National Concert Hall, Ireland. Isabelle is co-founder of Grand Band, a piano sextet described by the New York Times as: "six of the finest, busiest pianists active in New York's contemporary-classical scene”. She has also performed with Crash Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Da Capo Chamber Players, the ConTempo and New Zealand String Quartets. Composers she has worked with include John Adams, John Luther Adams, Missy Mazzoli, Meredith Monk, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, Kevin Volans, Linda Buckley, Donnacha Dennehy, Dan Trueman, Bunita Marcus, amongst many others. Isabelle has recorded for the Diatribe, Innova, NMC and Lyric fm labels. She was hailed by The New Yorker as “the Irish piano phenom” upon the release of her debut solo album RESERVOIR in 2010. A Fulbright scholar, Isabelle holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. She is currently on the Visiting Piano Faculty at Bard College and Conservatory of Music in New York, and has given masterclasses and workshops around the world, including at Queen’s University Belfast, Montclair University, the New Zealand School of Music, Dublin Institute of Technology and the European Piano Teachers’s Association.


Elizabeth Hilliard, Soprano

Elizabeth is an exceptional singer based in Dublin and is widely regarded as an imaginative and dramatic interpreter of new music. She has worked in close collaboration with composers including Gráinne Mulvey, Jennifer Walshe, Christopher Fox and David Bremner and champions Irish art, music and composers, achieving recognition in the US and UK as well as her native country. She has been supported in her career by bursaries from Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Creative Ireland, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and South Dublin County Council.Current projects include Crushbar: a collaboration with visual artist Louise Manifold, composer Evangelia Rigaki and percussionist Richard O’Donnell, Pomegranate, a long duration installation by Evangelia Rigaki with text by Marina Carr, Slow Recognition, an experimental opera by David Bremner, directed by Hélène Montague.In 2021, she presented How The World Begins Again, a short feature series for RTÉ lyric fm on women composers and sound artists from Ireland.

Keith Pascoe, violin
Keith Pascoe was invited to join the Vanbrugh Quartet in 1998 whilst still a London-based musician. His studied violin, piano, chamber music, and conducting at the Royal College of Music under Jaroslav Vanecek, Eileen Reynolds, Aeolian and Amadeus Quartets, and Norman Del Mar. In 1985 he founded the Britten Quartet who became EMI exclusive artists having previously made numerous recordings with other labels, touring the world for ten years.
After the Britten Quartet disbanded, it wasn’t long before he heard Ireland’s call... In Cork he hit the ground running with a hectic national and international schedule. Touring for nearly twenty years with the Vanbrugh Quartet. In quieter times he was inspired to take further studies including research into the music of Luigi Boccherini. Several of his critical editions have been published, and he is Lecturer in chamber music and violin at TU Dublin. His solo violin work includes performing cycles of the complete Mozart and Beethoven Sonatas on a tour of Ireland supported by the Arts Council. And as director-violinist of Evlana, an Irish contemporary music group, he continues to work with living Irish composers.

As conductor of the Cork Fleischmann Symphony Orchestra for many years, he has conducted, and played concertos, on numerous occasions. The renaissance of the Vanbrugh has brought him further inspiration and refocus. Opening new possibilities in repertoire, collaborations and artistic challenges.

William Dowdall, flutes
Dublin born William Dowdall, one of Ireland’s leading musicians, combines a busy career as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. He trained in Cleveland, Ohio, where his teachers included Maurice Sharp of the Cleveland Orchestra, and his interest in new music was sparked by Donald Erb, composer in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music. On returning to Ireland at the age of 21 he was appointed principal flute of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. From 1979 to 2004 he was principal flute of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed professor of flute at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 2004.

He has given over 50 solo performances with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, and Irish Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared at all the major festivals in Ireland. He has been a member of the Daedalus Wind Quintet, Ulysses Ensemble, and the Ulysses Wind Quintet which was a prize-winner in the Colmar International Chamber Music Competition in 1980. As a chamber musician he has also guested with the RTÉ Vanbrugh and Parisii string quartets. Solo performances abroad have taken him around Europe, and to the USA, China, and New Zealand, and Australia. His work has been broadcast extensively by the Irish public service broadcaster, RTÉ, and he has also broadcast on BBC radio and television, Australian Television, and Shanghai Radio.

In addition to a wide ranging repertoire, his interest in contemporary music led him to develop a workshop based on contemporary solo flute music by Irish composers, which has been presented in Europe, United States, New Zealand, and Australia to considerable acclaim. He has introduced Irish audiences to new works from the international repertoire, and has actively promoted the music of Irish composers abroad. Many Irish composers have written works for him and he premiered a new work by John Buckley for flute and orchestra
with the RTÉ NSO and toured with it around Ireland in 2006 and performed it again with the NSO in January 2009.

In the last 2 years alone he has given 8 world premieres of works by Irish composers and has espoused the flute music of composers such as Bernstein, Boulez, Takemitsu, Henze, Varèse, and Maxwell Davies in Ireland. He recently gave the Irish premiere of Takemitsu's “I Can Hear the Water Dreaming” with the RTÉ NSO. As a solo artist he has made critically-acclaimed recordings for Goasco, Naxos, Marco Polo, Black Box, and Celestial Harmonies labels and is currently involved in a project with Atoll Records to record Irish and New
Zealand works for solo flute and flute and electronics.