Major award presented to LCMS founder Eamonn Quinn
FURTHER proof that Dundalk resident Eamonn Quinn is putting the town on the international music map, came last weekend when national German TV station (ZDF) rolled in to film Louth Contemporary Music Society’s festival.
They were there for the opening night of the festival, when Eamonn was presented with the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music, becoming the first ‘ backstage laureate’ to receive the €20,000 endowment from the trustees of the Forberg-Schneider-Stiftung Foundation.
Fittingly, the award was presented to LCMS founder and musical director Eamonn, in the Oriel Centre at Dundalk’s Old Gaol at the beginning of the ’Book of Hours‘ Festival’ which saw leading figures in contemporary music congregate in Dundalk for two days.
In announcing Eamonn as this year’s winner, the Board of Trustees stated: ‘All you need is a room and some cash’: Eamonn Quinn‘s physical space is a tiny biotope in Ireland, a rural town near the border to Brexit-plagued Northern Ireland. But the intellectual space of this man of convictions are the open skies and infinite new horizons marked out by his all-encompassing knowledge of contemporary music, his unerring perspicacity, his touching sensitivity toward things never heard before, his instinct for correlations in the repertoire and the peculiarities of the composers and performers he invites – at great financial risk.’
‘Eamonn Quinn himself is the ’ hero behind the scenes’. An emotional Eamonn Quinn, LCMS receives the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music from Gabriele ForbergSchneider.
Sometimes those scenes can be an ancient prison, sometimes a sanctuary or a cathedral. With unerring perspicacity and stubbornness, and with an inimitable touch, this free-thinking champion of the LCMS has mounted an annual festival of no more than four or five concerts, commissioning new works of music and immortalising them on the like-named CD label.’
Since establishing LCMS with his wife Gemma Murray over a decade ago, Eamonn has enticed leading musicians and composers to bring their magic to Dundalk. Celebrated American composer Philip Glass has performed in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Arvo Part wrote his first Irish commission ‘ The Deer’s Cry’ for LCMS, the legendary Terry Riley made his Irish debut with The Crash Ensemble, and a work composed by David Lang for LCMS became part of the music score for Oscar nominated Paolo Sorrentino film ‘Youth’.
The festivals attract music lovers from throughout Ireland and indeed, all over Europe, putting Dundalk firmly on the map of places where musicians and composers are appreciated.
‘I know I pick the music, but sometimes the music picks me.’ Eamonn has stated but this year the Board of Trustees of the Forberg-Schneider-Stiftung, picked Eamonn, ‘ the poet of the world of music’, to be their laureate in recognition of his pioneering achievements as an explorer and communicator.