Geoff Hannan was born in London, UK, in 1972. He studied composition privately with Michael Finnissy before reading Music at Manchester University where he graduated in 1993. In 1998 he was awarded the Gaudeamusprijs for Rigmarole, his first mature work, and in 2007 the 5th International Marenco Prize for Lifeblood. His music has been performed at many festivals in the UK and elsewhere, including Composer Lab in Dublin, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the London Sinfonietta’s State of the Nation and SOUNDINGS at the Austrian Cultural Forum, and been heard on British, Irish, French and Dutch radio, notably ‘The New Music Show’, ‘Hear and Now’, ‘Music Matters’, ‘Sounding the Century’ and ‘In Tune’. He has been been performed by, among others, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Skipton Camerata, the London Sinfonietta, IXION, the Ives Ensemble (Netherlands), CONTINUUM (Canada), EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble and tenor Andrew Staples. In 2019 he was awarded an Ivor Novello Composer Award for Pocket Universe.

Geoff has also written the music for the multi-award-winning animation Kahanikar (dir. Nandita Jain) and the BAFTA-nominated short film Take Your Partners (dir. Siri Rodnes). He has worked as orchestrator on the feature films Permanência (dir. Leonardo Lacca), and Miss Christina (dir. Alexandru Maftei) which won the Gopo Award for Best Original Music Score.

He also works as an arranger, having transcribed Elgar’s Enigma Variations for piano quartet and John Williams’ Prologue and Main Title Music from Superman the Movie for piano duet.

Geoff lives in Dublin, Ireland, and his music is represented by Donemus.

His music is not harmless pastoral panacea or cream cake. It can be a bracing tonic, or open windows onto magical and insane soundscapes — Michael Finnissy