Belfast get ready as BBC Radio 3 New Music Show is coming to Ulster Hall on 15 January 2026!
Join the Ulster Orchestra for a special programme of contemporary music by Dutch, UK and Irish composers being recorded for BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show. Conducted by Jac van Steen, the programme opens with Anne-Marie O’Farrell’s work Eitilt meaning 'flight' or 'airborne', which the composer says is a five-movement piece
…with Irish musical elements, referencing songs, and themes of joy, grief, and children.
Following this, a work by composer and conductor Jack Sheen titled A line, a curve or figure originally commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival and Britten Pears Young Artists Programme in 2016.
Jack says that
“A lot of [his] music is about expansion and contraction, but A line, a curve, or figure, is almost entirely about just expansion: the piece is loosely based on the idea of a fractal, alongside the idea of stretching out something to see(/hear) more of it.”
Then, three works by Dutch composers - the first is written by Nahia Vicente and a piece called Balea which is Basque for “Whale” and is inspired by the “greatness and wisdom of the sea.”
Robin de Raaff’s work Orphic Descent then follows, taking its inspiration from the Greek mythology, and finally Otto Ketting’s The Arrival written in 1993, part of the composer’s “Travel Quadtych” taking inspiration from the poem “Ithaki” by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.
