Belfast-based composer, librettist and director Conor Mitchell has been named as one of the first six Associate Artists in London’s Southbank Centre’s new programme to support “contemporary artists renowned for their sense of adventure and collaboration across art-forms”.
Twice nominated for an Ivor Novello Award—in 2020 for his Irish Times Theatre Award-winning Abomination: A DUP Opera and the following year for his orchestral work, Democracy Dances—Mitchell works across multiple disciplines and regularly employs other art forms in his work.
A former Composer-in-Residence with Wexford Opera and a Seamus Heaney Writers Fellow at Belfast’s Queen’s University, his work has been seen at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Rome and Holland festivals, the National Theatre and Southbank Centre.
His stage collaborators include playwright Mark Ravenhill, Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and Ulster Orchestra—with whom he premièred Propaganda: A New Musical and Mass—and Irish National Opera.
More recently, he has created work for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, Belfast’s Outburst Queer Arts Festival, Cologne Opera and Festival de Marseille.
The product of Mitchell’s Southbank relationship is expected to be seen in 2027 when it will involve his own Belfast Ensemble.