Brent Parker, born in New Zealand, has resided in Ireland since 1958.

His compositions have been performed in the National Concert Hall, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Helix Theatre, St Thomas’s Church, Dugort, the Linenhall, Castelbar, and many other venues. His Piano Concerto No 1, which was performed by The Savaria Symphony Orchestra of Szombathely, Hungary, conducted by Robert Houlihan with Finghin Collins as soloist, was featured in the 40th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising series of concerts in Ireland in the National Concert Hall.

Many other artists have performed his music: John Feeley, guitarist, The RTE Symphony Orchestra, (now the NSO), the RTE Concert Orchestra, Thomas Martin, double bass, Aisling Drury-Byrne, cello, William Dowdall, flute, Andreja Malir, harp, Ethna Tinney, pianist, Nicola Sharkey, soprano, Angela Feeney, soprano.

John Feeley has commissioned many works from Brent for guitar and piano and guitar and orchestra. John has performed his Concertino 1 in Greece and on TV3 France. It has been broadcast many times on RTE and has been heard on radio in Texas.

His work, En France, commissioned by RTE Lyric FM, has been broadcast many times. His work for choir and orchestra, written as Composer-in-residence at the Laois School of Music in 2007 has been shown on Nationwide Television and has been performed in the Electric Picnic.

He is currently working on the presentation of a radio opera for teenagers, string quartet and guitar, which is very innovative and is for very broad audiences. He is also making final preparations for the presentation of his course Composing on Computer.

Photo: Ken Wright