About

Ailís Ní Ríain is an Irish composer and writer who aims to produce work that challenges, provokes and engages. Her work has been performed across Europe, in Israel, Brazil, USA and Japan and broadcast on BBC and RTÉ.

Ailís works broadly in the areas of concert music, music installation, opera, music­-theatre and has collaborated with writers, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, techologists and theatre artists. A portrait album of her music is scheduled to be released by NMC Recordings in 2022.

She has been awarded international fellowships, associate artist positions and residences at Yaddo, USA, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Irish Cultural Centre in Paris, the Ragdale Foundation, ArtOMI in New York and Bogliasco in Italy.

In 2016 she was awarded the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers and is represented by CMC.  Ailís trained as a pianist and has dedicated considerable time to developing work for ‘altered piano’.

Site-specific music-installations include music installations for a lighthouse, a K6 telephone box, a dis-used former cotton mill, the Brontë’s family home, a castle keep, a railway station accumulator tower and a high-street shop unit.

Ailís has a hearing impairment and has made work referencing deafness, disability and mental health since 2006.

She is an advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion and sits on the Ivors Academy EDI steering group and is a Disability Arts Online board member and sits on the Ivors Academy Classical Committee.

As a writer of words for stage, Ailís work is published by Nick Hern and Bloomsbury and has been translated into French, German and Swedish and produced in Ireland, UK, New York, Germany and Sweden. Her work in French is represented by L’Arche

Ailís is grateful to the Irish Arts Council, the PRS Foundation, Unlimited, Arts Council England, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the RVW Trust and the Hinrichsen Foundation for supporting her work.