President Of Ireland To Confer Composer Roger Doyle As Saoi August 16

On August 16, Heresy Records recording artist, Roger Doyle, will receive the honor of Saoi, the highest award open to an Irish artist. Doyle will be presented with the symbol of the office of Saoi, the gold Torc by Irish President, Michael D. Higgins. The honor is bestowed by Aosdána, the state-supported association of Irish artists.

The title of Saoi is awarded for life and held by - at most - seven distinguished artists at a time. Doyle will be the twentieth artist to receive the honor since its inception in 1984. Former award-winners include Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel and Louis Le Brocquy.

Heresy Records recording artist, Roger Doyle, is known for his pioneering work as a composer of electronic music.His latest recording for Heresy Records is The Heresy Ostraca(2019), an imaginative reworking of music from his electronic opera, Heresy, which premiered in Dublin in 2016. Other recordings for the label include, Heresy(2018), an electronic opera based on the life and works of the renaissance genius and heretic, Giordano Bruno and Time Machine (2015), a haunting and evocative recording based on answering machine messages from the 1980s. He is also prominently featured on two compilations of electronic music,A Map of the Kingdom of Ireland(2018) and On the Nature of Electricity & Acoustics(2013).

Doyle has worked extensively in theatre, film and dance, in particular with the music-theatre company Operating Theatre, which he co-founded with actress Olwen Fouéré.Babel, his magnum opus, composed over a ten-year period, was released on a 5-CD set in 1999. Other works include an onstage piano score for the Gate Theatre production of Salométhat was directed by Steven Berkoff and which played in Dublin, London's West End and on three world tours, and various recordings and performance collaborations with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. In July 2018 the full-length documentary by director, Brian Lally, The Curious Works of Roger Doyle, was premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh and has subsequently been featured at the Irish Film Institute and Cork Film Festival.

Recent compositions include a series of soundtracks for imaginary films for the National Symphony Orchestra and Crash Ensemble. In 1997 he won the Programme Music Prize and in 2007 the Magisterium Award at the Bourges International Electro-Acoustic Music Competition. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland's state-sponsored academy of creative artists, and Adjunct Professor at Trinity College, Dublin.

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