Deirdre Gribbin

Deirdre Gribbin (born 14 May 1967) is a composer from Northern Ireland. Career Gribbin was born in Belfast. She studied at Queen’s University Belfast where, at the age of twenty, she began to compose. Further studies were in London (at the Guildhall School of Music with (Robert Saxton) and in Denmark (with Per Nørgård). Her first professional success came when her piano piece Per Speculum in Aenigmate won the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Composition Prize. Subsequent major works have included the piano quartet Jack B. (inspired by the work of the Irish painter Jack B. Yeats), the piano trio How to Make the Water Sound, the opera Hey Persephone!, the violin concerto Venus Blazing, which was directed by Lou Stein with lighting by Jeff Ravitz, and The Binding of The Years, for piano and orchestra. Celestial Pied Piper was published as part of Faber’s Millennium Series. She lived in New York where she was a Fulbright Fellow. Several of her works respond to the political climate of her homeland, such as the ensemble piece Tribe, the orchestral work Unity of Being, which was performed by the Ulster Orchestra as part of the UK WITH NY Festival in New York after 9/11, and her e