Congratulations to TDNI member Conor Mitchell who has been announced as an Associate Artist at London’s Southbank Centre. The Associate Artist programme sees the Southbank Centre establish long-term partnerships with artists in order to present major new artistic projects.
From David Bowie to Igor Stravinsky, from Nina Simone to Chaka Khan, throughout their history they have hosted the world’s artistic innovators and boundary-pushers.
From 2024 they will be building on this reputation for excellence and experimentation through the new Associate Artists programme; three-year artistic partnerships with contemporary artists renowned for their sense of adventure and collaboration across art-forms.
Each year sees them partner with three new artists for a three-year period in order to build major new projects which will be premiered in their iconic venues.
Conor is a multi-award-winning opera and music-theatre composer, librettist, and stage director, renowned for blending stage design with contemporary visual arts. Based in Belfast, his work engages audiences through socially relevant, politically charged subjects.
A double Ivor Novello British Composer Awards nominee, Mitchell has received the Arts Council Northern Ireland Major Individual Artists Award and is a life fellow of the Arts Foundation for composition.
Mitchell’s opera Abomination: a DUP Opera – which came to the Southbank Centre in 2023 – was listed in the Top Ten Classical Works of 2019 and won Best Opera Production at the 2020 Irish Times Theatre Awards. Among his most notable recent orchestral works are his Queer Mass and Riot Symphony, both premiered by the Ulster Orchestra.
Notable collaborations by the artist include the Rome, Holland, Edinburgh, and Aldeburgh festivals, the National Theatre, and Irish National Opera. Recently, Mitchell has been Composer in Residence at Wexford Opera and a Seamus Heaney Writer’s Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. More recently he has collaborated on new works for Cologne Opera, the Abbey Theatre Dublin, Festival de Marseille and Outburst Queer Arts Festival.
Mitchell is the founder and Artistic Director of the award winning Belfast Ensemble, who premiere his latest music-theatre work in 2026.