Neil Martin

Belfast-born Neil Martin grew up in a household where his parents' musical tastes ranged from Bach and Mozart to The Beatles and Ry Cooder, from Kid Ory and Seamus Ennis to Louis Armstrong, Sean O Riada and Bessie Smith. A cellist and an uilleann piper, he was encouraged to play both traditional and classical music from an early age. Among his teachers were piper Liam O Flynn and cellist Richard Markson, the latter a pupil of Tortellier and Fournier. A Music and Celtic Studies graduate of Queen's University, Belfast, Neil has since enjoyed a most varied and rewarding career that encompasses composition, performance and production.

In 2004 Neil was commissioned to write a major work for uilleann pipes, whistle and symphony orchestra - no tongue can tell. The 43-minute work opened the Belfast Festival at Queen's in 2004, featuring Liam O'Flynn as soloist with the Ulster Orchestra in the Waterfront Hall. The piece also played the National Concert Hall in Dublin, in March 2005, with the RTE Concert Orchestra.

Neil has been commissioned to write a major work to mark the 400th anniversary of The Flight of the Earls. This will be composed for symphony orchestra and 120 voice chorus, and will be premiered in the Waterfront Hall, Belfast, in September 2007. Neil's writing of this piece will be the subject of a BBC television documentary that will be screened round the same time.

Other recent commissions include Soundings, a chamber trio for Lyric FM; an operatic collaboration with Pauline McLynn for Opera Theatre Company; Oilean na Marbh, a song cycle for Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill and the West Ocean String Quartet, for Templebar Cultural Trust in Dublin.