Piers Hellawell, Professor of Composition in the School of Creative Arts, is among an international group of composers whose new work will be premiered as part of the 2016 BBC Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall this summer.

Professor Hellawell’s work for orchestra, Wild Flow, will headline a concert to be given on Sunday 21 August at the 2016 Proms by the Ulster Orchestra, under the baton of its exciting Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare. The programme, which opens with the new work, also contains the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Haydn and Tchaikovsky’s 5^th Symphony. The concert, which is also a leading event in the celebrations of the 50^th anniversary of the Ulster Orchestra, will be relayed on BBC Radio 3 and online as part of the BBC’s coverage of the Proms.

The BBC’s famous flagship concert series, billed as ‘the world’s greatest classical music festival’, has always been a celebrated platform for new music, including classical and, in recent seasons, popular, jazz and world musics.  Professor Hellawell is one of a select group of composers in academic institutions to have had multiple Proms commissions, as another of his works, Inside Story, premiered in the 1999 Proms season.

Commenting on the event, recently-appointed Managing Director of the the Ulster Orchestra Richard Wigley said that he is delighted that the orchestra will be showcasing Piers Hellawell’s music: “he is a major compositional figure here and we are honoured to be giving the World Premiere of his Wild Flow.”

This year will also see the premiere of another of Piers's projects: Up By The Roots, a PRS Foundation ‘Beyond Borders’ collaboration with award-winning poet and Queen's Professor Sinéad Morrissey and Fidelio Trio, which comes to the Belfast Book Festival at the Crescent Arts Centre in June as part of a UK tour.

Visit the BBC Proms 2016 webpage.