A Courthouse Arts Centre and Mermaid Arts Centre Creative Partnership
Ireland’s leading new music group, Crash Ensemble, are proud to announce Everything Is Connected, a bold new large-scale project by acclaimed Irish composer Ed Bennett, touring to venues across Ireland in 2026. At its heart, this ambitious work places collaboration, community, and shared experience centre stage, bringing Crash together with local musicians, choirs, and performers in each location.
Commissioned by Crash, Everything Is Connected unfolds as an open, collaborative musical space, where professional performers and community participants make music together. Each concert becomes an expression of connection - between musicians, between communities, and between performers and audiences.
“My idea in creating this work was to explore the concept of connection in the broadest sense: musical connection, human connection, connection to nature and the planet we inhabit,” says composer Ed Bennett, “The idea of connection here is both a grand and everyday one, ranging from a simple, kind gesture from one human to another, the passing of a note from one musician to another or from the performers to the audience, to the awe-inspiring connection to the greater world around us.”
Described by The Guardian as creating “unclassifiable, raw-nerve music of huge energy and imagination”, Bennett is one of Ireland’s most distinctive contemporary composers. His work spans orchestral music, opera, electronic music, installations and film, and has been commissioned and performed internationally by organisations including the BBC, RTÉ and Music Network. In 2024, he was elected to Aosdána in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland.
With Everything Is Connected, Crash continue their commitment to reimagining contemporary music as a shared, inclusive experience, working directly with communities across the country. Each performance features collaborations with local choirs and musicians, creating a dynamic and evolving live work that reflects the unique character of each place.
Crash are a group of world-class musicians making music that defies boundaries. They bring together a flexible group of exceptional performers drawn from across Ireland, spanning strings, winds, percussion, piano and electric instruments.
Crash commission, collaborate, and experiment with artists across musical genres and artforms, creating cutting-edge projects that inspire, engage, and resonate with audiences in Ireland and internationally. Driven by community, innovation and artistic excellence, they thrive on reimagining how contemporary music can connect people.
Crash Ensembe perform regularly throughout Ireland and worldwide, with recent appearances at November Music (NL), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Carnegie Hall (US), Edinburgh International Festival (UK), The Barbican (UK), National Concert Hall (IE), Royal Opera House (UK), GAIDA Festival (LT). Their collaborators include Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, Bryce Dessner, Lisa Hannigan, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Sam Amidon and Beth Orton.
Crash Ensemble is a not-for-profit organisation supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council with international touring supported by Culture Ireland. They are ensemble-in-residence at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, and Kilkenny Arts Festival.
Irish composer Ed Bennett’s music is performed and broadcast in over 30 countries in venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican and South Bank Centres and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Over the last 25 years he has created a substantial body of work for a variety of contexts including those for the concert hall, opera, dance, installation and film. Recent highlights include “Psychedelia” for the RTÉ NSO and Thomas Adès, “Ausland” for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Reinbert de Leeuw, “Song of the Books” for Crash Ensemble and five critically-acclaimed portrait discs of his work.
He directs his 10-piece ensemble Decibel, described in The Quietus as “blending the coiled concentration of the best post-minimalism with the ferocity and dynamic range of thrash metal.” His recent portrait CD “Psychedelia” (2020) was described in the Sunday Times as “ebullient, deeply compelling music” and featured in the New York Times as one of their recommended releases of 2020, whilst the Guardian described his work as “unclassifiable, raw-nerve music of huge energy and imagination.”
Ed Bennett was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Major Individual Artist Award, the highest honour awarded to an artist from the region. For his body of creative work he received the prestigious Leverhulme Prize for Performing Arts and his music has been twice shortlisted for the Ivor Novello awards. In 2024 he was elected to Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland honouring artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland. He was recently a fellow at the Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Bavaria for the 2024/25 season and is Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. Current projects include new work for New York’s Bang On a Can Allstars, an evening length work for singer Michelle O’Rourke and a new work for the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland’s 2026-27 season.
Ed Bennett
Composer
Director of Decibel Ensemble
Professor of Composition, RCM London
Member of Aosdána
