Via The Journal Of Music: The National Concert Hall has announced the winners of its three bursary awards for 2025.
The €10,000 Young Musician Award for String Players will be shared between violinist Sam Monedero Egan, violinist Scarlett Xu and cellist Elizabeth Troup; mezzo-soprano Deirdre Arratoon has been awarded the €5,000 Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award and a performance in the Kevin Barry Recital Room; and composer Aoife Kavanagh has won the €2,500 Jerome Hynes Young Composer Award plus a commission to compose a work that will be premiered at the NCH. The awards were made following a call for submissions in January of this year. A shortlist of performers was then invited to perform for a panel of judges.
Young Musician Award
For the Young Musician Award, Sam Monedero Egan performed Bach's Partita No. 3 BWV 1006 and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor; Scarlett Xu played Milstein’s Paganiniana and Schnittke’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1: IV; and Elizabeth Troup played Fauré’s Après un Rêve, Op. 7, and Davidov’s At the Fountain.
The competition was adjudicated by Joe Csibi, Head of Orchestra and Choirs at NCH, David Daly, Principal Double Bass at Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and Ioana Petcu-Colan, Leader of the Ulster Orchestra.
Monedero Egan has recently joined the Royal Irish Academy of Music to study with Lynda O’Connor and is part of the RIAM’s Young Artist Programme. He won the 2025 RIAM John Pollard Award and was a finalist in the Dublin Philharmonic Society Junior Solo Competition. He is also leader of both the Dublin Youth Orchestra Symphony Orchestra and RIAM Symphony Orchestra and is a member of Ulster Youth Orchestra.
Scarlett Xu began her violin studies with David O’Doherty at TU Dublin Conservatoire. She has been leader of the TU Dublin Sinfonia for the last three years and is also a member of TU Dublin Philharmonic and the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland. A leader of The High School Orchestra and co-leader of the Dublin Youth Orchestra Symphony Orchestra, she has won a number of awards at the Feis Ceoil and other competitions across Ireland.
Elizabeth Troup is a student of Dr Annette Cleary at the RIAM. She is also on the RIAM Young Artist Programme and was selected for the Eversheds Accelerated Academy Programme. In addition to national prizes for cello and chamber music at the Feis Ceoil, Troup won the RIAM Junior Solo Competition (2022) and the cello bursary (Stephen Vernon award) in the RIAM John Pollard Award (2023).
Previous winners of the Young Musician Bursary include Julieanne Forrest, Claire O’Connor, Fiachra de hÓra, Callum Owens, Kevin Jansson, Sarah Brazil and Adam Joyce.
Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award
For her winning performance in the Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award, Deirdre Arratoon sang Mahler’s 'Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld’ and Handel’s ‘Quando mai, spietata sorte’. The competition was adjudicated by Joe Csibi, Diego Fasciati, Executive Director of Irish National Opera, and mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O’Connell, who has just been nominated for two Grammy awards.
Irish soprano Arratoon is based in the UK. She began her vocal training in Ireland before earning a scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Following her studies, she joined the Glyndebourne Opera chorus for the 2017 festival and tour. Since then, she has built a career across the UK and Ireland. Recent highlights include the title role in Bizet’s Carmen with Opera South-East and touring with Opera Collective Ireland in Jonathan Dove’s Flight.
Previous winners of the NCH Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award include Deirdre Higgins, Clare Quinn, Kelli-Ann Masterson, Sarah Richmond, Susie Gibbons, Jennifer Davis and Gavan Ring.
Jerome Hynes Young Composer Award
Aoife Kavanagh is a composer and sound designer working across dance, theatre, film and concert music. She has previously written works for the Irish Youth Training Choir, bass-baritone Kevin Neville and cellist Adrian Mantu. She was also a winner of the 2025 West Cork Chamber Music Festival Young Composers Competition for her string quartet Every Cloud Passes Over, which was premiered by the Magnolia Quartet. Other recent premieres include Dreamscape for solo piano, commissioned by the Embassy of Poland and performed by Tamara Niekludow at RIAM. Kavanagh was one of two composers selected for the Contemporary Music Centre’s Emerging Composer Scheme in 2021–23.
Previous winners of the Jerome Hynes Award include Robin Haigh, Harry O’Connor, Anselm McDonnell, Timothy Ethan Doyle, Christopher Moriarty, Eoghan Desmond, Amanda Feery and Emma O’Halloran. The adjudicators for this year’s award were composer Seán Doherty, Assistant Professor of Music at DCU, and O’Halloran, who has also just been nominated for a Grammy for her operas Trade and Mary Motorhead.
For further details on the bursaries, go here, and read more from The Journal Of Music here
