Roscommon County Council Arts Office announces the recipients of the 2023 King House Piano Commission Awards - Bianca Gannon, Peter Leavy and CMC-represented composer Fiona Linnane.The 2023 Commission marks the third in a series of music commissions by Roscommon County Council, in celebration of the grand piano at King House, purchased in 1998 through the Arts Council of Ireland Joint Purchase Scheme.
https://www.cmc.ie/news/02012023-1151/three-recipients-2023-king-house-piano-commission-announced
Peter Leavy, an award-winning composer-pianist, is Head of Piano at the Leeson Park School of Music and a tutor at Maynooth University. The title of his work, 'The Last Flame', is taken from a first-hand account of the fire which destroyed Rockingham House in 1957. This dramatic testimony was written by local historian and watchmaker, Richard McGee (1930-2016), and was published in the Moylurg Writers second local history collection. Peter explains, “The text is brilliantly written, full of drama, poetry, vivid description, and possessing a beautifully paced narrative; it is, in a sense, ready-made for a purely musical translation.”