Paul Hillier

After 16 years in post, Paul Hillier stepped down as Artistic Director of Chamber Choir Ireland in 2024.

As Chamber Choir Ireland’s longest-standing Artistic Director, Paul made an enormous contribution to choral music across the island of Ireland, with programming that melded the familiar and unfamiliar, the early and the contemporary, the serious and the absurd.

In Paul’s time at the helm, he consistently elevated the work of Irish composers, with commissions and premieres of works by Andrew Hamilton, Gerald Barry, Siobhán Cleary, Kevin Volans, Piers Hellawell, Jennifer Walsh, Stephen McNeff, David Fennessy, Eoghan Desmond, Amanda Feery, Ian Wilson, and Rhona Clarke—many of which Paul has taken on to a wider audience with his other groups.

He has also opened up CCI’s capacity to be part of larger international co-commissions and premieres of works, including those of Tarik O’Regan, Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Cassandra Miller, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Linda Catlin Smith, John Luther Adams, Terry Riley, and Gabriel Jackson.

Paul has worked to build an ensemble which can proudly stand beside our international contemporaries.

Chamber Choir Ireland is currently undertaking a recruitment process to appoint our next Artistic Director and expect to make an announcement in Autumn 2025. 

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