Who is Ciaran?

The music of composer Ciaran Hope is shaped from a rigorous, distinguished artistic training and strong affinity with the music. Ciarán has just completed a year of work on the original film score for the Hollywood Film "The Letters" based on the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Recorded with the Macendonian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Mother Teresa's home town of Skopje Macedonia and the New Dublin Voices Choir in her spiritual birthplace of Dublin Ireland, the score will be heard in cinemas around the world in 2015. He recently completed a much anticipated violin concerto for the celebrated Irish violinist Cora Venus Lunny, with the support of an Arts Council Project Bursary Award.

A former Fulbright Scholar in film music, Ciaran has been the recipient of awards such as the IMRO prize at the RTE Musician of the Future, the International Solstice Composition Prize, a National Training Commission for Film and Television Bursary, an Arts Council of Ireland Postgraduate Award and his music was a finalist at the 2012 Park City Film Music Festival, the International Clarinet Association Composition Contest and the International Song for Peace Contest and he worked as part of the orchestrating team on the score of the Hollywood feature film The Insider, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

Having undertaken composer residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Artist's retreat in Co. Monaghan and the Cill Rialaig Artist's Retreat in remote Co. Kerry with the kind support of a 2011 Tyrone Guthrie Centre regional Bursary Award and a 2012 Cill Rialaig Residency Award, Ciarán was awarded the position of Composer in Residence for 2013 at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, where he spent 3 months working on a suite for orchestra and a new opera on the life of Robert Emmet.

Ciaran has been commissioned to create pieces for prestigious cultural groups and organizations such as the Czech Clarinet Quartet and the Latvian Ministry of Arts and Culture and the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan, where his new work is the signature tune for the centre and will be played before performances, at launches, exhibition openings and other publicity events. His recent commissions for youth orchestra have premiered on the main concert stage at Euro Disney and the Church of Sainte-Merri in Paris 2012 and in Verona Italy during the spring of 2013 and the reaction from the performers, parents and audience has been phenomenal.

Internationally, Ciaran's music has been performed at showcases such as the Electro-acoustic music Festival of Cadiz, the Symposium of Brazilian Computer Music and the Logan Chamber Music Series in the famed Chautauqua Institute, New York. In 2012, a new arrangement of his composition SOLSTICE for a combination of ethic Chinese and Irish instruments was selected for performance at the second Beijing Irish Modern Music Festival of Beijing. He has also contributed music towards films that have been featured at over 40 film festivals around the world and have enjoyed commercial success in the U.S. entertainment industry as a composer for major entertainment companies, including Walt Disney, Trimark Pictures, Alcon Entertainment, TomandAndy, and Alliance Atlantis.

Commercially, his 2006 album, Etude in Film Score, was so successful that it made the top 40 sales at CDBaby.com in its first month. A track from the album, Childhoods End, was selected for inclusion on an exclusive, limited release CDBaby promotional CD due to the album's success.

Ciaran has also participated in BMI's prestigious Conducting Workshop, where an elite group of 8 composers out of their 400,000 membership are chosen to spend two weeks working intensely with a conductor and live musicians at the musicians union in Los Angeles.

As a speaker, Ciaran has given master classes on composing at a variety of venues including Trinity College Dublin, the Dundalk Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado at Denver, the 2012 IMRO Ireland Film and TV Music Composers / Filmmakers Networking Event at the National Concert Hall and to secondary school students through the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. In December 2010, at the behest of the Provost Dr. John Hegarty, he organized a panel discussion that took place in the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin which focused on music placement and scoring in film and TV and gave master classes on film composition to Trinity postgraduate and undergraduate music students. The panel sold out in 3 days.

Aside from his film-scores, Ciarán has received much praise and recognition as a songwriter and producer. His band won both the pop music category and the overall Grand Prize at Artist Direct's "BornOnTheWeb" song contest, resulting in a first prize of $25,000, recording equipment and the opportunity of being the opening act for Star 98FMs "FanNation" hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Lisa Fox, at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, CA. He performed alongside Eve 6, Third Eye Blind, The Go-Go's, Billy Idol, Uncle Cracker, The Counting Crows and The Wallflowers to name but a few. His music also had the unique position of holding 4 of the top 9 positions on the charts simultaneously on MP3.com - the precurser to the apple download charts.

Ciarán is rather unique in the film industry in that he is recognized not only as a talented composer, but also as an accomplished film re-recording mixer. He has mixed movies such as the Raleigh Studios motion picture VIRGINIAS RUN, the hit independent documentary feature film BETTY BLOWTORCH, as well as for the documentary TV series HERE FAMILY and films such as SCREW CUPID, ALL IN, HOLLYWOOD HORROR, GRACE, THE HEALING and LITTLE STAR.

Being a skillful re-recording mixer in the film and television industries has enabled Ciarán as a composer to create a variety of scores, closely aligned with a films sound mix, which serve to strengthen the movies unique character and tone. The capacity to combining technical expertise with a deep understanding of services, including composing, recording, mixing, sound design, ADR recording, dialogue/FX editing and re-recording mixing, leaves Ciarán incredibly well positioned to create a vibrant, relevant and exciting film score from within his innovative work structure.