Ann Cleare is an artist working in the areas of concert music, opera, installation, and site specific work. Described as "an altogether different artforms" that draws from musical traditions, but pushes against and beyond them, articulating something that is at once about sound, but that is equally concerned with energy, motion, space, and the world itself", her work explores the sculptural and expressive nature of sound, expanding the possibilities of timbre, texture, and form. Often exploring poetries of place, time, communication, and transformation, Cleare's work aims to animate ideas through sound, immersing an audience in both the wildness and intimacy of sonic expression.
From The Berlin Philharmonie to the Walt Disney Hall to Lincoln Centre to Wigmore Hall and HARPA, Ann Cleare's work has been commissioned and presented by international broadcasters such as the BBC, NPR, ORF, RTÉ, SWR, WDR for festivals such as New Music Dublin, Gaudeamus Week, Wittenertage fur Neue Kammermusik, International Music Institute Darmstadt, MATA Festival, Sound Reasons Festival in India, Shanghai New Music Week, Totally Huge New Music in Perth, Rainy Days, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Musikfest Berlin. Through working with some of the most progressive musicians of our time, she has established a reputation for creating innovative forms of music, both in its presentation, and within the music itself. She has worked with groups such as The International Contemporary Ensemble, Crash Ensemble, Musikfabrik, ELISION, The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Nikel, The Curious Chamber Players, Yarn/Wire, ensemble mosaik, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, ensemble recherche, TAK, Ensemble Garage, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Ensemblekollektiv, line upon line, Bozzini Quartet and soloists such as Carol McGonnell, Richard Craig, Patrick Stadler, Ryan Muncy, Claire Chase, Richard Haynes, William Lang, Lina Andonovska, Michelle O'Rourke, Samuel Stoll, and Callum G'Froerer.
Recent works have focused on creating experiential environments where sound is given a visual as well as sonic dimension. Inspired by sites of historical importance in the Midlands of Ireland, MIDHE aims to reanimate the fire of Ireland"s disappeared middle province through the sound and movement of over 200 performers; TERRARIUM maps the geological strati of the boglands into an immersive terrarium of sound and light performed by 10 musicians and earth tapestries; NOCTURNE, unfolding across indoor and outdoor spaces of sites that celebrate and protect the night sky, weaves site, sound, and audience participation to observe the ways humans have imagined the cosmos across history. Little Lives, a 90-minute opera for five singers and ensemble, examines the topic of information wars and the progressive and regressive roles of national identity. Meridians, a 1-hour, spatialised work for string quartet with solo clarinet and solo saxophones, imagines music as a machine for measuring luminosity, energy, time, and memory, with vectors of sound unfurling around the audience, akin to a sundial and nocturnal at work in the modulating worlds of day and night.
Current and future projects include a string orchestra work for Ensemble Resonanz to be premiered at Donaueschingen Music Festival 2026; a new immersive work for TAK to premiere in New York in Spring of 2027; new chamber works for Riot Ensemble and Stone Drawn Circles; and an Extended Reality work created in collaboration with multimedia artist Fionnuala Conway.
Ann studied at University College Cork, IRCAM, and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. In October 2019, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of Ireland for her contribution to music. Her scores are published by Project Schott New York. She is Assistant Professor of Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin and is one of the first 40 members of the Young Academy of Ireland network.
