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Announcing BAN BAM Award Recipients 2025

BAN BAM commissioning and development award for female and gender-diverse composers in jazz and improvised music.

Improvised Music Company (IMC) are delighted to announce the recipients of the 2025 BAN BAM commissioning and development award for female and gender-diverse composers in jazz and improvised music.

The 2 composers, selected by an international jury of experts, are Joanna Mattrey and Christine Tobin. Each composer will receive a commissioning fee, and their new works will be premiered on April 3rd as part of the New Music Dublin festival.

Joanna Mattrey
is a violist and composer working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centred on ceremony and ritual.

“I am deeply honoured and grateful to receive the Ban Bam Commission to present my new piece, Battle Ready II, at New Music Dublin! It is such a vital opportunity that helps correct gender imbalances in the improvisation community and grows access and inclusivity for artists. Thanks so much to IMC for the powerful initiative.”
- Joanna Mattrey

With themes of conflict, loss of home and cultural identity present, Joanna Mattrey’s piece ‘Battle Ready II’ tasks the performers to play for those who have no voice. The work will include composition, improvisation, spoken text, and video. The quartet of Saxophone, Violin, Viola, and Synths, featuring Joanna Mattrey, Nick Roth, Larissa O’Grady and Simon Jermyn draws on the musicians fluency in improvisation and notated music, oscillating between coordinated written events and sweeping improvised textures and gestures to create a powerful live experience.

Christine Tobin is Dublin-born vocalist and composer, who has been an integral part of the Irish, London and New York City jazz scenes for many years. She returned to Ireland in 2020 and is now based in Co. Roscommon. Her authentic sound has been described by The Guardian as “Tobin’s 24-carat voice” while praising her for both the poetry of her compositions, and the warmth of her golden voice. Her style, although rooted in jazz, is eclectic and draws on a broad range of influences.“BAN BAM gives me the opportunity to present new work that marks a new direction in my creative life, and it’s a good feeling to be part of a commission that has diversity and innovative creativity at its core.” - Christine Tobin

Tobin’s new composition for BAN BAM ‘Pseudologia Fantastica’ will explore themes of disinformation, and the misappropriation of new technologies. In the history of communication, we have never been so connected, yet we often find ourselves divided, mistrustful and weighed down by dark uncertainties. Performed by Christine Tobin with accompaniment by cellist Kate Shortt, the piece includes spoken word and song, as well as live electronic fx, pre-recorded soundscapes & compositions by Tobin, sonic improv and hand percussion marking a new direction for this artist.

IMC Creative Producer Aoife Concannon said “The calibre and range of the applicants for the BAN BAM award is growing from strength to strength each year; very exciting for the Irish music landscape in general, and particularly for us working in jazz and improvised music. The selected composers for 2025, Joanna Mattrey and Christine Tobin, are both exceptional musicians and composers in this field, and while coming to us from different directions, their strong themes and innovation as artists compliment each other wonderfully. We look forward to a brilliant programme of new music from them”

Improvised Music Company’s BAN BAM initiative began in 2017 through research and a one-day festival to address a visible gender imbalance in the Irish jazz scene.

In 2020, IMC and Moving On Music came together to launch a BAN BAM commission and development opportunity for female and gender-minority artists across the island of Ireland. The selected composers - Úna Monaghan, Sue Rynhart, & C.V. Lunny - wrote new works which, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were developed into site-specific music film projects in 2021.

2023 saw the next round of BAN BAM commissions, with Carole Nelson, Meilana Gilard and Bianca Gannon selected for the award. Their new works premiered in Dublin in January 2024, with further performances in Belfast, Manchester Jazz Festival, and London Jazz Festival.

The 2025 composers Joanna Mattrey and Christine Tobin will premiere their new works on Thursday April 3rd at The Complex, as part of New Music Dublin, with a further performance in Belfast later in the year.

Tickets on-sale 4th February.

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