5 exciting collaborative new music projects supported to tour across the UK and Republic of Ireland through PRS Foundation's Beyond Borders

13 December 2024 - Press release

 

PRS Foundation, together with Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Arts Council of Ireland announce the UK and Ireland-based organisations, music groups and composers that will receive funding through the co-commissioning and touring programme Beyond Borders. The 5 exciting collaborative cross-border projects are: 

• Emma Lloyd (Scotland) commissioned by The Night With... (Scotland) in partnership with Kaleidoscope Night (Republic of Ireland), Canolfan a Theatr Soar (Wales) and Old Town New Music (Scotland) to present the “Emma Lloyd album tour” for a new solo album for violin and electronics featuring work by six contemporary composers.

• Julie Fowlis (Scotland) commissioned by Celtic Connections (Glasgow Life) (Scotland) in partnership with TradFest Belfast (Northern Ireland) and a festival in Dublin (Republic of Ireland) to present “Allt II: Cuimhne” exploring the links of music and language across three territories with a shared history of Gaelic culture, through Allt's orchestrations of new Gaelic songs.
  
  
• Neil Luck and Chihiro Ono (England) commissioned by Birmingham Record Company (England) in partnership with Kirkos Ensemble (Republic of Ireland) and COMA Glasgow(Scotland) to present the “MenCon Tour” of the radical reinterpretation of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto Op.64 devised with the ensemble ARCO.

• Lulu Manning (England) commissioned by Serious Trust (England) in partnership with Llais Festival (Wales), Moving On Music (Northern Ireland) and Glasgow Jazz Festival(Scotland) to present “The Take Five National Tour” bring together four brilliant artists who have taken part in Take Five to reimagine the music they originally wrote for the project to be performed by a quartet. 

• Trevor Mathison (England) commissioned by purge.xxx (England) in partnership with Institute of Contemporary Arts (England), Centre for Contemporary Arts (Scotland) and Chapter (Wales) to present “Black Industrial/Noise”, with three performances in the former industrial heartlands of England, Scotland, and Wales, facilitating new collaborations and recordings, serialised and in boxset form, with a distinctive group of artists exploring different notions of Black Industrial/Noise.

 

Elizabeth Sills, Grants & Programmes Manager at PRS Foundation said, “Huge congratulations to all the organisations and composers selected for these 5 exciting projects. As 2025 sees Beyond Borders marks its 15^th year, I very much look forward to watching these latest collaborative projects come together and reach, inspire and entertain audiences across the UK and Ireland over the next 12 months.”

Beyond Borders was established in 2010 to support high quality co-commissions and tours, stimulating collaboration between composers, performance groups and music organisations across the four different UK countries and, since 2014, the Republic of Ireland.

Previous Beyond Borders successes have included ‘Songs of Separation’, a collective of 10 female English and Scottish folk musicians whose album won ‘Best Album’ at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2017, and David Fennessy's ‘Panopticon’, commissioned by Hebrides Ensemble and Psappha, which won the Scottish Award for New Music for Small Scale work. Huw Watkins and Stuart McRae’s operas ‘In the Locked Room’ and ‘Ghost Patrol’ commissioned by Music Theatre Wales and Scottish Opera received a 4**** review in The Guardian whilst Robert Jarvis’s ‘aroundNorth’ sound installation which uses the movement of the stars to create a mesmerising sound map of the universe, is now permanently installed in the grounds of commissioning organisation, the Armagh Observatory, following its Beyond Borders tour.

Beyond Borders is a co-commissioning and touring programme run in partnership with Creative Scotland using National Lottery funding, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

 

To find out more about the programme, please visit: https://prsfoundation.com/funding-support/funding-for-organisations/beyond-borders/