It’s 2011 and Ciaran is being kept busy writing his Hope Violin Concerto for Irish violinist Cora Venus Lunny. Winner of the prestigious 2009 International Solstice Prize, Ciaran Hope is recognized not only as a composer, but also as an accomplished orchestrator, songwriter, producer and film mixer. Growing up in Ireland, the Dunboyne native studied engineering at Trinity College before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the world-renowned UCLA film scoring program.
His many film projects include orchestrating the Golden Globe-nominated score for Michael Mann’s The Insider, as well as scoring films such as Screw Cupid, Hollywood Horror, Grace, All In, Interrogation, ManFast and The Man in the Iron Mask. He provided the music for the documentary TV series Here! Family and arranged/produced tracks for Buffy the Vampire Slayer; he also made an appearance on Buffy, performing a specially arranged duet of his song So High.
Ciarans last major album release, Etude in Film Score, made the top 40 sales in its first month of release at prominent independent music retailer CDBaby.com and a single from the album, Childhood Ends, was selected for inclusion on an exclusive, limited release CDBaby promotional CD as a result of the album’s success.
Ciaran was also selected for BMI’s prestigious Conducting Workshop in 2010. An elite group of 8 composers out of their 400,000 membership are given the opportunity to spend two weeks working intensely with a conductor and live musicians, leading nicely into his next challenge – doing string arrangements for 6 tracks on the new Seneca album being produced by Noel Hogan of The Cranberries, which they recently recorded in studio in Limerick. The next film score on the horizon for Ciaran is for an epic movie on the life of Mother Teresa being shot by Academy Award nominated cinematographer Jack Green and directed by award winning director Bill Riead. So far, the cast includes Golden Globe winner Rutger Hauer and Golden Globe and Oscar nominated Max Von Sydow.
Since completing the score for the Award Winning movie Truth about Kerry (best Screenplay, 2010 LA Femme Film Festival) starring Stana Katic of (ABC’s Castle, Quantum of Solace), Ciarán has been dedicating several intense months of writing to the new concerto, being created in a close collaboration with Cora, in the hopes of creating a profound new addition to the violin repertoire.
