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Jerome de Bromhead (born 2 December 1945) is an Irish composer, classical guitarist, and member of Aosdána.
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Biography
Jerome de Bromhead was born in Waterford, Ireland. He studied with A.J. Potter and James Wilson at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, with further studies with Seóirse Bodley in 1975 and Franco Donatoni in 1978. He holds an M.A. in music, art history and English from Trinity College, Dublin. As a guitarist, he studied with Elspeth Henry (1967–8) and at the Guitar Centre, London (1969). He worked in RTÉ as a television news director and announcer, as well as a senior music producer for radio, until a serious accident forced him to retire in 1996. He currently lives in Dublin.
Music
His compositions include works for solo guitar as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. His Symphony No. 1 (1986) represented Ireland at the International Rostrum of Composers at UNESCO in Paris. He describes his style as "neither a Postmodernist nor a deaf-as-apostmodernist. Above all I am suspicious of anything that seems like dogma."
His harpsichord piece Flux (1981) was performed at the ISCM World Music Days in Germany in 1987 and is now published by Tonos Verlag of Darmstadt.
According to guitarist John Feeley, de Bromhead's solo guitar composition Gemini (1970) is "a sophisticated work, both technically and compositionally. It has the dynamism of youth, with a sense of freshness and it projects an attractive, driving energy [...] It is an effective concert work, which speaks well on the instrument and is particularly gratifying for the performer."
Scores and Recordings
The Contemporary Music Centre Ireland website contains sample scores and recordings of a selection of de Bromhead's works, available here.