From rural County Down, Deirdre’s work has been performed at London’s Southbank, The Wigmore Hall, The Phillips Collection, Washington, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, Orléans Concours International, Gothenburg International Chamber Music Festival, National Concert Hall, Dublin, The National Sawdust, Brooklyn, Symphony Space and Carnegie Hall, New York.
Recipient of a Director’s Choice Award from Boston Metro Opera’s International Composers’ Competition and an Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award, Deirdre received a coveted Paul Hamlyn Composer Award, London, in 2018. Deirdre’s work represented Ireland at the 2023 International Society for Contemporary Music World New Music Days, Cape Town, South Africa. Previously her work was selected by BASCA from a Europe-wide call for performance with the BBC Singers at St Giles', Cripplegate, and was selected for performance at the International Association of Music Information Centres world gatherings in New York and Ireland.
Recent performances include the triptych response to Heaney's The Midnight Verdict, with Benoît Sitzia and Gregory Vajda, performed by Ensemble Ars Nova, Farnaz Modarresifar & Katalin Koltaï, Theatre Auditorium, Poitiers; performances of her Dublin International Piano Competition commission, Ash, given by Danny Driver at Oxford’s Holywell Music Room, Smorgaschord Festival; Litany to the Magdalene Dead and Nora, commissioned and performed by Deirdre Brenner with Lotte Betts-Dean at The Oxford International Song Festival and West Cork Chamber Music Festival; a setting Seamus Heaney’s The Owl, for The Fidelio Trio and soprano Daire Halpin in a GlasDrum Winter Chamber Music Festival commission, an Irish tour of her string orchestra work, Meltwater, with Richard Egarr and the Irish Chamber Orchestra and performances by pianist Andrew Zolinsky in Dublin, London, Spain and at the Dark Music Days Festival, Iceland.
Previous commissions and performances have included works for Northern Ireland Opera, State Choir Latvija for Louth Contemporary Music's Baltic Music in Ireland Festival with Arvo Pärt, BBC Singers, Chamber Choir Ireland, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Boston Firebird Ensemble, Norwegian Vertavo, Swiss Terpsycordes, Vanbrugh and RTÉ Con Tempo string quartets, Access Contemporary Music Chicago, New Music Dublin, Sound Festival, Aberdeen, RTÉ’s Composing the Island and Living Music Festivals; Musici Ireland, Dutch violist Elisabeth Smalt, Calefax Reed Quintet, Finnish pianist Antti Siirala, Chloë Hanslip & Danny Driver, Darragh Morgan & Mary Dullea, Mairéad Hickey & Fiachra Garvey, Dušica Mladenović & Ian Wilson, Catherine Leonard & Hugh Tinney, Tasmin Little & Martin Roscoe, Ruth Morley & Laura Bowler, Clíona Doris, Robin Tritschler, Concorde and the Crash Ensemble. Former Composer in Association to the Northern Sinfonia’s Young Sinfonia, Deirdre was the featured composer at the Chamber Music on Valentia Festival, 2020.
Collaborative partnerships have included new work with visual artist Jean Duncan for the Old Museum Arts Centre and Naughton Galleries, Belfast and Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin, and the creation of an opera short for Northern Ireland Opera on the life of Blair Mayne, created with writer/ actor Richard Dormer. Previous collaborations include work with poets Kate Newmann, Damian Smyth and Maria McManus, as well as choral and instrumental settings of both Beckett and Heaney. Her work has been incorporated by filmmaker Des Bell into three films, featuring at the Venice Film Festival, Dublin International Film Festival and Montreal World Film Festival. Deirdre was awarded a British Academy Award for her Masters in Composition at The University of Manchester and completed her composition doctorate at Queen’s University, Belfast, with Piers Hellawell. Living in Dublin, Deirdre studied privately with Kevin Volans.
Her music has been released on the Lorelt, Diatribe, Métier and RTÉ Lyric FM labels and broadcast by BBC Radio 3, RTÉ, Deutschlandradio Kultur and New York's WNYC and WQXR.
New Music Dublin Festival
'Among the other memorable performances were the RTÉ Con Tempo Quartet’s handling of James MacMillan’s Memento and Deirdre McKay’s Mr Shah Stares to the Heavens, as well as another McKay piece, buttons, breath, bow, played by Concorde...'
Michael Dervan, Irish Times
West Cork Chamber Music Festival, 2024
McKay’s setting (Litany to the Magdalene Dead)… left nobody unmoved’
‘...Both Brenner and mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean – who stood in for Fleur Barron at short notice – fully committed themselves to the performance and the presentation of the concert as a whole evoked a deep sense of reverence. As an artistic project that aimed to give a voice to the voiceless, I’m not sure I can ever recall hearing anything as powerful as this in an Irish context’
Adrian Smith, Journal of Music
The Magdalene Songs
Driven, NI Opera, The Mac, Belfast
“The whole piece was given a perfect musical expression ... the furious churning of memories and impressions with the momentum of the speeding car .. Driven was consummately dramatic, operatic and emotionally charged”
Opera Journal, NI Opera Shorts
Driven, NI Opera The Mac, Belfast
“Amid the whirl of musical colours from these five operas, his wistful "I'm coming home" twinned with a poignant, muted trumpet solo sticks in the mind”
Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
New Music - New Ireland, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall
“Deirdre McKay’s between is a unique meditation on Beckett and existentialism. Serene throughout ..“
Anthony Aibel, New York Concert Review
Irish Chamber Orchestra, Cork School of Music *****
“Deirdre McKay’s newly composed Meltwater is exceptionally imaginative in the sound world she creates”
Declan Townsend, Irish Examiner
Park Lane Group Series, Tippett Quartet, Purcell Room
“Deirdre McKay’s little sails ... married advanced technical demands to a respect for the quartet medium, and, above all, conveyed an intrinsic harmonic and textural atmosphere”
Geoffrey Norris, Telegraph
Vogler Spring Festival, Vertavo String Quartet
“What impressed most was the technical accomplishment of the writing”
Michael Dervan, Irish Times
Park Lane Group Series, Jessica Chan, Purcell Room
“Deirdre McKay’s time, shining offered splendidly icy timbres and the chance to prove that Chan, too, had icy control”
Keith Potter, The Independent
“Deirdre McKay’s time, shining paints a mostly meditative winter landscape … a very fine work that makes me curious to hear more of her music”
Hubert Culot, MusicWeb International
David Quigley (pf) Piano Music from Northern Ireland
Louth Contemporary Music Baltic Voices in Ireland: Arvo Pärt St Peter's Church of Ireland, Drogheda
‘In the three opening works, including the new pieces by Latvian Georgs Pelecis and Irish composer Deirdre McKay, the excellent Latvian choir was conducted by one of its own conductors, Maris Sirmais. McKay's specially commissioned Plunkett’s last words is conceived as a layered, slowly-shifting drone out of which the words coalesce and rise to intense heights’
Michael Dervan, Irish Times
Sound Festival Scotland : Postcards from a fragile Planet Laura Bowler (voice), Ruth Morley (fl)
‘And we've another piece of soaring emotional and political anger honed into a mesmerising performance now from Laura and Ruth’s Gaia programme for Sound : Deirdre McKay’s Postcards from a fragile Planet'
BBC Radio 3 New Music Show Tom Service
mr shah stares to the heavens Musici Ireland, Métier Divine Arts label
"Deirdre McKay’s 'mr shah stares to the heavens' captures the tension between cosmic silence and the richness of sound on Earth — a quiet meditation through music"
WSMR radio USA, The Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline
Oxford International Song Festival
“Commissioned with courage and enterprise by the pianist Deirdre Brenner, The Magdalene Songs, an ongoing project, gives voice to each survivor in their own words.
The mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean made the most of her expert dramatic skills, with no excess,... Equally affecting was McKay’s Litany to the Magdalene Dead: the names of 72 of the many were sung as a solemn roll call, intoned on the same E flat note by Betts-Dean, with Brenner supplying an ever more intense piano part”
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer