Irish composer, Ruaidhri Mannion, is a scholar at the Royal College of Music currently supported by the Douglas and Hilda Simmons Award. Having begun his studies in contemporary composition with Piers Hellawell at Queen’s University Belfast, Ruaidhri went on to be the violinist for Irish rock outfit Catoan. While with the band, they released the debut album And Will I in 2007 with Curious Incident Records and toured across Ireland and the UK.

Ruaidhri is currently studying for his MMus in Advanced Composition with Ken Hesketh at the RCM. His work He broke from them, and then he broke from himself was one of four shortlisted works for the London Contemporary Orchestra’s Call for Scores 08/09 and was recently selected as the winner of the RCM Concerto Competition. Other recent performances include Untitled Sound for Viola accompanying the images of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Ruaidhri is now branching out into the world of film music and recent projects have included work with students from the London College of Communication on the film Laughing Tears; the film was recently premiered at the British Film Institute.

http://www.myspace.com/ruaidhrimannion